ACT on CO2 – or NOT?
“Hey diddle diddle, the car and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon on discovering just how easy it was to reduce our CO2 emissions”
That’s how the latest “Act on CO2” advert features in last weekend’s telegraph. It then goes onto say that “40% [of Co2] is caused simply by the way we heat and light our homes and drive our cars”.
I’m assuming tax-payers paid for the pile of nonsense. Firstly, this kind of woolly, misleading marketing is on a par with “up to 8 meg broadband”. At a casual glance, we’re responsible for 40% of emissions and really CAN do something about it.
Or not. Firstly CO2 is only part of the emissions issue and in fact the COW in the advert is probably at least as responsible for greenhouse emissions as we are…. no mention then of reducing meat consumption (and I’m not a veggie). I had planned to point you to a very informative TED conference on the subject of how much damage METHANE causes (a kilogram of methane is something like 23Kg of carbon monoxide) but it seems to have mysteriously disappeared off the web. If you want the full, excruciating facts check on Jamais Cascio’s blog here.
The fact is that in this freezing cold, wet country there is not a lot we can do with our heating other than to make sure we’re fully insulated. In a recession these people are DREAMING if they think we’re all going to pop out any buy newer, more efficient systems – I just had to replace our oil heater (not voluntarily) and its going to cost over 2K all in – who’s going to do that right now? As for the car… the stupid idiots could not have timed it worse – like we’re all going to leave our cars at home and take the pushbike in the freezing snow?? Spring might have been better timing!
And when we’ve done all of that, what influence do we have as a diminishing economy over China and India who’s burgeoning economies and conversion to western diet (see the blog above – cheeseburgers) will ensure any efforts we make have virtually no effect whatsoever on the environment – we’re a tiny little island for heaven’s sake – what, they’re all going to follow our lead? I don’t think so.
There is of course a solution that solves all of the problems – it requires less cows, smaller factories, less movement of goods, less travel – indeed it covers all angles of the entire pollution problem.
HOW ABOUT HAVING LESS KIDS!
A dramatic drop of children now would be disastrous for any economy and our short-sighted politicians should have been working on this in the 70’s when it was plain for all but politicians to see that automation was going to reduce the need for manual labour – but no-one had the stomach for it – and now we’re paying the price. With the massive societies we have now, any breakdown in our systems (collapse of the automobile industry due to running out of fuel, massive power cuts etc) would result in us spending our lives in total civil disorder, wallowing in our own waste products. Our lack of foresight and lack of ability to take stern action will be our undoing – and what is the solution… take the pushbike out once a week.
Give me a break.