Comment (Early 2021)

With our global civilisation completely dependant on consuming resources at a faster rate each year, and political systems which are focused on short term economic goals,the Earth in the mid 21st century will be a greatly degraded as compared to the Earth of the 20th century. The advances the human race has made up to now in combating climate change have been negligible compared to the damage that has, and is still being done. Unlike when nations go to war and huge sacrifices are made (both economical and in terms of human life), politicians over the last 40 years have continually refused to take any significant action to protect the planet. The money that has been spent on combating covid-19 in the past year dwarfs all money spent on repairing the planet to date. Covid vs Climate Change. World leaders have spent this enormous amount of money because covid is an obvious enemy that is killing thousands of people now and directly impacts pending elections. The affects of climate change will, with small and increasingly large incremental steps, devastate the lives and wealth of many millions for hundreds of years to come. but (the politicians hope) not that noticeably before your next election.

In summary, our institutions cannot deal with this crisis. A radical rethink is needed of how human civilisation is structured and how it interacts with the planet. It seems very unlikely that the wheels of global politics can inact the changes needed (many of which are very simple) to reduce this crisis, and so we will have to live with an altered world as best we can. It is possible (let's hope not though) that a tipping point may occur that radically changes the climate in ways that will result in the end of the human race. That seems like a bit of a shame, but ultimately it's not really very important when considering the size and complexity of the cosmos. My only hope is that when the aliens finally visit Earth, they laugh their heads off when they reailse how we managed to destroy a paradise and wipe ourselves out with our complete obsession for wealth tokens.

Without leadership from our governments, what is the biggest single thing an individual can do to save the planet?

Eat Less Animals

...including animals from the oceans. (Seaspiracy)

(Other educational videos: BBC Nature|Biodiversity)

 

New Comment (14/11/2021)

COP26 has just finished and we all congratulate the politicians for agreeing to stop methane pollution and reverse deforestation. We only hope that these promises will result in immediate and sustained action. However this meeting has proven that the most polluting nations, whose economies depend on coal and oil, have decided that although the planet is at risk, they will continue to invest in coal and oil for another decade with the likely outcome of a 2.4 degree warming by the end of the century. Many species will become extinct and the world’s weather will probably become radically altered. The polluting nations have stockpiled lifesaving Covid vaccines, and completely avoided paying poorer nations the climate change response money they promised over 10 years ago. It would almost seem that the richer nations are not only at war with the planet but also with the poorest nations.

Thanks to the COP26 delegates, the aim to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees is almost certainly dead.

The truth is that fighting climate change is hard and costly and first world politicians don’t think their voters want to hear that and won’t stand for higher taxes or suffer other expenses - like paying for electric cars, heat pumps and insulation. These politicians are easily identified since they always package any climate response initiative as resulting in new jobs and new wealth creation. They seem to avoid explaining that flooding, fire, drought and sea level rise will be far far far more expensive in the future than protecting our environment now.

Many have said that COP26 was a good first step (there have been 25 previous COPs that were, presumably, all just ground work) but that next year’s COP will be much better. Unfortunately, every year that nothing changes is another year closer to a possible catastrophic climate change event. So... what would you do to save the planet? Would you invest in a heat pump heating system? Would you pay extra for an electric car? Would you pay $10 a month for a "help the environment" tax? Why not write to your representative and demand more action and say what you would be prepared to accept to help save the environment. If politicians understand that people care about the environment, then they might have the guts to implement changes that might negatively affect the money wealth of voters in return for increased environmental wealth.

To help save the planet, why not demand :

THE PHASING OUT OF ALL FOSSIL FUEL SUBSIDIES & INVESTMENTS BY 2025

New Comment (08/03/2022)

A new crisis has occurred in which Russia has invaded Ukraine. The reason Putin has been able to attack is because of his oil and gas which powers 40% of the Europe Union and 8% of the USA. President Biden knows that if Gasoline prices rise in his country he will likely lose in up coming elections, and so he is looking to find more oil from somewhere... anywhere.

Yet again the world leaders have shown that they pay lip service to environmental concerns, but in reality have no backbone at all. It's the next election that they worry about, not the future prosperity of the entire planet.

Two years ago it was made clear that the actions of humans in this decade was pivotal in the future of the planet. There have been small gains in developing technologies, but there is no evidence of any movement that would keep us within the 1.5 degree temperature rise that is so important for so many plants, animals and humans.

The USA has happily spent billions of dollars and thousands of lives in wars all over the world in order to protect democracy, contain communism and protect its supply of fossil fuels. Today, for many countries including the US, the situation is whether to 1. protect democracy and world order and raise the price of oil by a few percent or 2. keep funding Russia's war in order to keep gasoline prices low.

In reality, the world should already be on a war footing to remove dependence on fossil fuels. Oil should be taxed heavily to push people to use more environmentally sustainable sources of energy and help fund the change. Billions should be invested in non-polluting sources of power and power storage in order to reverse the degradation of the planet and to try and ensure every country (as much as possible) is energy self-sufficient. Now is the perfect time to start a war on fossil fuels and make a massive and positive investment in all our futures.

NO TO WAR and NO TO FOSSIL FUELS.

 

New Comment (07/10/2022)

Has anyone been paying attention to the weather this year? We all know that extreme weather comes and goes and that weather records are broken somewhere around the world every year, and that has always been the case going back way into history. However, 2022 has been particularly striking in the frequency and intensity of odd events. Never seen before heat waves and floods have occurred. During the European heatwave parts of some major rivers became unnavigable due to extremely low flows. Many countries in Africa are experiencing the worst floods and longest droughts for decades, if not on record. Many desert areas around the world have been surprised by heavy rain during months which are usually the driest. Scientists have quietly remarked such things as "Greenland ice cap melt is now irreversible", "6% of remaining glaciers in Switzerland melted away this year", "The high temperatures experienced in some parts of Europe this year were not possible before industrialisation".

Scientific models have predicted that the extreme heat waves across the US and Europe will occur more often, and once all the glaciers have melted away, there will be no reserve of water to keep the rivers flowing through the summer and food production (and industry) will be severely affected.

Scientists have warned about irreversible tipping points being reached which will accelerate warming. Those tipping points are happening now.

COP27 is a month away and some countries (like the UK, the hosts of 'successful' COP26) seem eager to distance themselves from this conference and are now heavily investing in fossil fuels in order to boost "growth, growth, growth". With countries once seen as "world leaders" in environmental policy giving up on the planet, one would expect many more countries to follow suit.

If you look around at reports from environmental organisations (like the IPCC) they like to be optimistic and focus on what we can do to prevent the earth warming by more than 2 degrees C (1.5 degrees is no longer a viable aim) if we act now. None of the current pool of world leaders and politicians are prepared to do what is required now (no matter how sensible and low risk those actions might be) and most are being pulled towards increasing pollution in order to support failing financial systems.

I'd like to end this comment with a pithy sound bite that says something that's inspiring or insightful, but can't think of anything. As an aside, this morning Joe Biden mentioned that Nuclear War is on the cards.

New comment (21/11/2022)

COP27 has ended. Politicians are congratulating themselves that they have agreed to setup a "loss and damage" fund for vulnerable countries. However they have made no new commitments towards reducing carbon emissions. It is good that rich, polluting, countries have acknowledged that poor, non-polluting, countries need help. However without massive investment in reducing carbon emissions now, they are setting up a fund which will consume more and more money every year as more and more countries (including the richest) are devastated by the climate.

The commitments to reach carbon neutral by 2050 are all well and good, but useless without shorter term goals. Politicians know that 30 years is a very long time in politics and they just don't care about 2050. To them 2050 is someone else's problem. If they agreed to cut emissions by 3% a year, then 1.5 degrees could be achieved, but no politician will ever agree to that.

Global carbon emissions remain as high as ever and it's clear that climate change is really starting to hurt us. Despite that, governments continue to invest in fossil fuels and shun green alternatives. COP Article.

For those interested in the science of the carbon cycle, this NASA page is very useful. It has a lot of detailed information that reveals how complex the world is, and how protecting the nature is so important to controlling the climate.

New comment (20/03/2023)

On the 4th March, 2023, an almost unbelievable event took place when the UN passed the High Seas Treaty to protect 1/3 of the worlds international waters from exploitation. This very cynical observer did not think it was possible that any such international agreement would ever be reached. This is the first piece of really good news on the environment for a very long time. Its unfortunate that the media (as far as I could tell) seemed to report on this as a minor news story and not give it the significance it deserves. Protecting the oceans will be a major step in helping to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Of course implementation is the now the key and that will take money and political will to ensure the treaty is enforced.

Today the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report on the state of climate change. As always, it does it's best to be optimistic and indicates 1.5C is still theoretically possible - but only if everyone, and especially the biggest polluters, make drastic changes now.