Monday, December 7, 2009

Climate or Not - Reduce Emissions

A friend of mine made a great point in a post on climate change science; there is more to reducing carbon emissions than reacting to global warming.

As the global population grows and easy-to-access oil becomes scarce we will be forced to rethink our consumption habits - especially our consumption of energy.

Rather than wait until the last minute we should act now to wean ourselves off fossil fuels. The benefits are clear. Investing in low-carbon solutions now means we have increasingly efficient fossil-fuel-alternatives - just as oil become increasing rare. At the same time low-carbon solutions reduce pollution in the local community. It's win-win for everyone on the planet!

Here are the points my friend (Mr M.Heffernan) makes that inspired this post.


1. There will be more people on the planet tomorrow than there were today. Never in the history of our planet have tomorrow's number of people attempted to live on earth at the same time.

2. We are sitting on a finite amount of water and, to a certain extent, soil.

3. We all have an impact on the environment by our very existence. After all, why feel guilty for enjoying ourselves while we are here?

4. Given an increasing population and finite resources, attempting to pollute less would seem logical

5. We could all pollute less by consuming less stuff.

Think about it this way. In 1800 the world's population was about 1 billion people; 210 years later the worlds popultion is almost 7 billion. It is estimated the poplution will increase by almost two billion people in the next 40 years to 8.9 billion people - UN Release.

It is pretty simple, and it might just save the world as we know it for future generations.

1 comment:

  1. Taking those thoughts a little further see this article on children being the "climate criminals" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ethicalman/2009/12/are_our_children_the_real_climate_criminals.html) and a website of an organisation that is already addressing this big question (http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.earth.html).

    These are hugely bitter pills to swallow and its not simply a problem of "poor people breeding too much" because, as one blogger on the BBC suggests. "20% of the worlds population consumes 86% of the world products and food. Bon appetit!"

    Mark Heffernan

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