Guardian: The human tragedy is that there is no connection between what we know and what we do. Almost everyone is now at least vaguely aware that we face the greatest catastrophe our species has ever confronted. Yet scarcely anyone alters their behaviour in response: above all, their driving, flying and consumption of meat and dairy.
During the most serious of all crises, the UK elected the least serious of all governments. Both the Westminster government and local authorities continue to build roads and expand airports. An analysis by conservation charity WWF suggests that, while the last UK budget allocated £145m for environmental measures, it dedicated £40bn to policies that will increase emissions.
Astonishingly, it is still government policy to “maximise economic recovery” of oil and gas from the UK’s continental shelf. According to the government’s energy white paper, promoting their extraction ensures that “the UK remains an attractive destination for global capital”, which is “the best way to secure an orderly and successful transition away from traditional fossil fuels”. It’s hard to imagine a more perverse argument. But when you pursue incompatible aims, the first casualty is logic.
So, as our house burns, the government sends in the tanker trucks to spray petrol on the flames. Doubtless unswayed by the donations the Conservative party has received from oil and gas companies, Boris Johnson appears to be on the point of approving the development of a new oilfield – the Cambo – in the North Sea. Yet, as climate scientists have long explained, there is no realistic prospect of preventing more than 1.5C of global heating unless all new fossil fuel development is stopped. Read more..
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Life on this planet is created as a result of the ability of soil to produce protein. As this ability is reduced, proteinaceous plants move out and woody plants move in. Species dependent on particular proteinaceous plants for their nutrition suffer when the nutritional value of these plants decline as the soil fertility declines. The decline of soil fertility over time is a natural event over long periods of time. A further continued decline in the ability of the soil to produce protein with lead to the extinction first of the species, followed later by the extinction of the plant. This is regardless of any change in the average temperature. This is easy to demonstrate by doing the opposite. Try increasing the ability of soil to produce protein for a proteinaceous plant that has a particular species that depends on it. If you are successful in increasing the ability of the soil to produce protein, the problems with the plant and the species will go away and the woody plants will no longer “out compete” the proteinaceous plant.
The value system of capitalism does not allow for life to supersede competition and ‘winning”.
When FDR capped the income and taxed 100% over, invigorated our agriculture, while under pressure from the socialist and communist parties, it led to an era of prosperity. The industrial age is essentially over, so we now produce multi-billionaires.
This rabid greed is heavily protected by a warm blanket of militant religious extremism and a steady flow of dumber than ever political types. A crack down is necessary. They seize assets all the time from the poor, but not the uber wealthy. They arrest water protectors, and reward water polluters. Our species is not making a good case for earned existence. We are the murder hornets.
You gotta be kidding, for the ones that complaining, just turn the power off to you place of living, sell you automobile like do without anything that uses fossil fuels like plastics, cell phones, computers and such. With all of them doing that by living off the grid it can make a big difference!
You said it right Donald.
“””there is no realistic prospect of preventing more than 1.5C of global heating unless [[[all new fossil fuel development is stopped]]].”””
In that case, there is no realistic prospect!
Because there is no realistic prospect of stopping [all new development] of fossil fuel usage.
And that is because there is no real prospect of stopping [the use of fossil fuel]; at least not for several decades. Civilization has become too dependent on it. And as long as we are dependent on it, we must continue its refinement.
The most realistic scenario for stopping the use of fossil fuel on a relatively dime’s worth of time, short of catastrophic events, is some leap in nuclear energy. And even that would require the total electrification of everything.
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