Wednesday 26 July 2017

Maybe we'll only see the light when the lights go out.



It's a while since I've published a blog post.  I have been put off recently because, apart from spending much of my time on other commitments, I felt my posts were tending to cover well-trodden ground.  Whilst that's true, if all bloggers and authors were to follow that axiom, nothing would ever get published!  So the theme of this post is our inability to take climate change seriously and take the appropriate actions NOW to try to prevent a global disaster.

It's certainly very well-trodden ground but when I hear some world leaders, who shall remain nameless, questioning the established scientific evidence for climate change, I despair.  The good news, of course is that there are still many influential members of the global community who do see the need to reduce rapidly the use of fossil fuels.  Many of the global movers-and-shakers, however, are totally committed to year-on-year economic growth and that's a problem.  Economic growth requires population growth, which in turn feeds economic growth.  So it's a vicious or virtuous cycle, depending on your perspective.  From the perspective of those of us who worry about the future of the planet, it is definitely vicious!  From the politician's perspective who is more concerned with growth in gross domestic product (GDP), it's a virtuous cycle.

According to the United Nations Population Fund, human population grew from 1.6 billion to 6.1 billion people during the course of the 20th century.  During that time emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the leading greenhouse gas, grew 12-fold.  Yes it's a non-linear relationship, which is scary!  So we need to focus on sustainable development rather than economic growth per se, which is anathema to capitalism as we know it.  An excellent article in The Guardian showed the impact we can make on reducing greenhouse emissions by birth control. 

"The greatest impact individuals can have in fighting climate change is to have one fewer child, according to a new study that identifies the most effective ways people can cut their carbon emissions.
The next best actions are selling your car, avoiding long flights, and eating a vegetarian diet. These reduce emissions many times more than common green activities, such as recycling, using low energy light bulbs or drying washing on a line. However, the high impact actions are rarely mentioned in government advice and school textbooks, researchers found."
Of course, changes in population from birth control take decades to show meaningful results.  So, in my opinion, we need a three-prong attack:


  1. Governments and individual citizens to take a responsible attitude towards climate change, including curbing CO2 emissions and limiting global temperature increase to no greater than the levels agreed as part of the Paris Accord.
  2. Governments and individual citizens to take a responsible attitude towards birth control.
  3. Education, education, education!  The responsibilities we have to the planet that we and the other 8.7 million species share, must form part of the essential knowledge base of all individuals and should, therefore, be a foundation of the basic learning curriculum.
Easily said!  The problem is we are running out of time to prevent catastrophic environmental consequences from more than two centuries of neglect of the planet, since the Industrial Revolution. 

Well trodden ground?  Maybe but there is plenty more treading to be done and no time to discuss the size of the boots!