Friday 20 September 2019

Climate change 'strikes'

Apparently, having just voted in the LNP (conservative) government in Australia, and with both major parties supporting coal mining, the most effective thing people can do to attack the climate change 'emergency' is to have a day off work/school and wave some placards around.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/global-climate-strike-live-australian-school-students-march-in-protest-of-climate-change-20190920-p52t70.html

The funniest thing about these hordes of people gathering to protest human greenhouse gas emissions is that the rise in greenhouse gas emissions since the 1880s has been driven mostly by the inexorable growth in the human population.

Just do a back-on-the-envelope calculation of what global emissions and the temperature rise would have been if population was still at 1880s levels...

I also wonder how many of these people are actually paying the few dollars extra that would be required to get all their domestic electricity consumption provided by renewables? As with most things, many people will cry out for action, but generally only if someone else pays for it - either via taxpayer funded schemes or by costing someone else their job.

It will also be interesting to see how many people protest in the countries that have increased global emissions the most in the past few decades - since 2005 US emissions have declined by 758 million metric tonnes, the EU by 770 million metric tonnes, while China has increased their emissions by 3 billion metric tonnes, and India by 1 billion metric tonnes.

It's not a coincidence that the underdeveloped countries with huge populations that are trying to 'westernise' their economies and living standards are the ones currently driving the world towards temperature rises above the 2 degree 'crisis' target. And it also shows the futility of making heroic cuts in carbon emissions in the developed countries when this is being overwhelmed by rising emissions in the developing countries.

Yes, the rich nations with already high living standards can best afford transitioning to non-polluting energy sources, and should lead by example (and pay the 'sunk costs' of developing the required technologies). But if this truly is a 'climate emergency' the most significant change that could avert a climate disaster would be to ensure that developing countries only develop via non-polluting energy sources, rather than simply pushing ahead with economic growth at any cost (on the back of fossil fueled energy supplies).

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