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The Environment / Ways to reduce our carbon footprint, and reduce our need for fossil fuels.
« on: 09/11/2007 03:06:36 »
I joined these forums in the hope that I can have some questions answered about climate change.
I am alarmed about climate change like many people are but I am completely unconvinced that what the UK is doing will make a blind bit of difference. We have set targets and are trying to encourage greater efficiency. However we are in a common world atmosphere and what we are doing is like a drop in the bucket of what is required. The majority of the world population have no intention of reducing their carbon emissions. Developing countries want to increase their prosperity and have what developed countries have, each family want a car, they want to be able to take regular flights. World population continues to rise and is forecast to rise from 6.6 billion to 9 billion by 2050. This huge increase in demand combined with increase in demand from the existing population dwarfs anything that the UK can do. Even if we managed to completely stop all our carbon emissions the reduction will be dwarfed by china's increase, we will still have catastrophic climate change. So I certainly don't intend to join in the fit energy efficient light bulb brigade. Ineffective action is just as good as no action
I have never heard any of our politicians arguing that we must reduce world population from what we have now (not just reduce the rate of growth) Our planet has finite resources we need to reduce consumption and reduce our demand on them. If instead of having a population of 9 billion we cut it back to 1 billion we would cut world carbon emissions by huge amounts. To do that we need to reduce the number of births and with people dying naturally the population will reduce. Difficult to get agreement, yes it will be, but it is the only action that I think will be effective.
I can see the remnants of our civilisation being found by another intelligence at some time in the future. They will say now this was quite an advanced civilisation about to make the step of not being bound to their planet. However they were so stupid that they couldn't keep their population under control and because of that they destroyed their resources.
Iain
I am alarmed about climate change like many people are but I am completely unconvinced that what the UK is doing will make a blind bit of difference. We have set targets and are trying to encourage greater efficiency. However we are in a common world atmosphere and what we are doing is like a drop in the bucket of what is required. The majority of the world population have no intention of reducing their carbon emissions. Developing countries want to increase their prosperity and have what developed countries have, each family want a car, they want to be able to take regular flights. World population continues to rise and is forecast to rise from 6.6 billion to 9 billion by 2050. This huge increase in demand combined with increase in demand from the existing population dwarfs anything that the UK can do. Even if we managed to completely stop all our carbon emissions the reduction will be dwarfed by china's increase, we will still have catastrophic climate change. So I certainly don't intend to join in the fit energy efficient light bulb brigade. Ineffective action is just as good as no action
I have never heard any of our politicians arguing that we must reduce world population from what we have now (not just reduce the rate of growth) Our planet has finite resources we need to reduce consumption and reduce our demand on them. If instead of having a population of 9 billion we cut it back to 1 billion we would cut world carbon emissions by huge amounts. To do that we need to reduce the number of births and with people dying naturally the population will reduce. Difficult to get agreement, yes it will be, but it is the only action that I think will be effective.
I can see the remnants of our civilisation being found by another intelligence at some time in the future. They will say now this was quite an advanced civilisation about to make the step of not being bound to their planet. However they were so stupid that they couldn't keep their population under control and because of that they destroyed their resources.
Iain