Energy, the environment & climate change.

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

I posted this in the Attenborough Perfect Planet thread recently;

“
Just watching the final episode now.

I’ve spoken a lot about us needing a health revolution off the back of Covid. But I’ll tell you what, it won’t matter how healthy we are; Brexit won’t matter, Tories, Labour, racism, homophobia, tackling prejudices, equality, pandemics, lockdowns, our jobs, money, football, music, trainers, none of it will matter... because humans will be extinct!

How much more airtime on the News or talktime in our lives do all those things get over and above the amount of air/talktime the destruction of the planet gets? Go through the threads across this and the Politcs part of the forum and have a look at how many people are talking about climate, the environment, extinction... the Brexit thread is on about its Fourth Edition but this thread went into hibernation after a page and a half!

We concentrate on far too much of the wrong things. The most important thing in the world is looking after the planet and making it the best possible place it can be for humans and other species to, not just survive, but thrive for as long as possible.

Concentrating on political points scoring either way over who’s in government, or looking at the USA’s political and social issues like it’s a reality TV show... they are not important!

How many of us “do our bit”?

I’ve got rid of my car, I cycle run and walk everywhere (sometimes get the bus), I try to not buy plastics, try not put the heating on if I can help it, and I now vote for the Green Party... but I still use a lot of electricity, I still eat meat despite knowing how much farming contributes to CO2 emissions, and I’m not proactive in trying to change things. I don’t do anywhere near enough, but some people do nothing!

And even if I did completely change to a Green life, what good is one man doing it when the UK population grew by ~350,000 last year despite an excess deaths of 15% on top of the usual ~650,000 deaths we usually have a year. So despite some people going Green, despite Covid killing 100,000+ people, we are still 350,000 people up on this time a year ago. That’s 350,000 more carbon footprints. And globally, despite a global pandemic, the net population growth in 2020 was ~82,000,000. That’s the entire population of Germany more in the world, an entire country’s carbon footprint extra in a year, and what about the years before that and the years ahead? And what are govts doing about this unsustainable population growth and unsustainable way we treat the planet?

Why is hardly anybody talking about this? Why does the News spend every day moaning about schools reopening and lockdown ending, then moaning that schools reopened and lockdown ended too early, then moaning that schools should close and we should go into lockdown again... why is Katie Price getting interviewed live on BBC News about a programme where she’s simply cashing in on her son’s disability?.. why aren’t they talking about the planet, not just more, but some days/weeks/months at all?

And why aren’t we?
”

We try and do our bit.

We've massively cut down on what goes in to the normal bin that ends up in landfill, we've increased what I recycle, and we try our best to buy local and sustainable/local.

We used to have 2 cars, now only one which we only use for long journeys or shopping trips and I started commuting to work by cycle (20km per day) about a year ago.

But like you say, some people do absolutely nothing, and we are pretty much at 2 minutes to Midnight as a species.

 

[Chippy_boy]

It's a myth that wind turbines don't reduce carbon emissions | Chris Goodall and Mark Lynas | Environment | The Guardian

Wind Energy's Carbon Footprint - FactCheck.org

It's a huge myth and one that is peddled by people with strong financial interests within the Gas/Oil industries.

That it is a myth I do not question.

But I do question who's peddling it. The BP's if this world are deeply into renewables and have been for two decades or more. Hedging their gets as it were. They have nothing to gain from rubbishing renewables.

 

[Chippy_boy]

But like you say, some people do absolutely nothing, and we are pretty much at 2 minutes to Midnight as a species.

As a species??? Don't be daft, mankind will exist on this planet for the next 100,000 years at least. What state the planet will be in, is another matter however.

 

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

As a species??? Don't be daft, mankind will exist on this planet for the next 100,000 years at least. What state the planet will be in, is another matter however.

Have you seen how people loose their minds when the Wi-Fi goes down? Imagine electronic banking goes down for 48 hours due to a power cut, or the internet falls over for a week.

Our way of life is so fragile and things such as climate change and energy shortages will absolutely change the way we as a species have to live. If you couple that change with another global pandemic or other catastrophic event then there is potential for humans to be all but wiped out not too long (in relative terms) in to the future.

 

[inchy14]

This is an eye opener.

The guy who made it started out doing a documentary on plastics in the oceans, but ended up doing a documentary on the fishing industry.

Netflix doc 'Seaspiracy' reveals shocking dark secrets in fishing industry (thetab.com)

Watched it the other day... those salmon farms seem filthy.

 

[inchy14]

just don't see how we can prevent environmental issues when the world population is growing at such an alarming rate

50 years ago , world population was 3.7 billion

right now it is 7.6 billion!

True but a study has shown that it’s going to peak and then decline rapidly as worldwide women are having less children now. Even in some African countries it’s going to go into decline.
Edit, article found.

Redirect Notice

www.google.co.uk

 

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

Watched it the other day... those salmon farms seem filthy.

I bet they were absolutely STINKING.

 

[Deleted member 77198]

Only way to sort the planet is a cull of the majority of human beings, the first lockdown I was one of those allowed to experience a world without basically humans. Travelling to work was a joy, the environment was cleaner, at home birds returned to the garden and as we all saw pollution dropped dramatically. Dolphins in the cabals of Venice. Let’s fast forward to today and the great unwashed have been released, they are in the parks leaving shit everywhere, if you think this bunch of selfish pricks will do anything but help themselves you are sadly mistaken. Maybe COVID is a way of nature getting its own back and maybe the beginning of many more attempts to wipe us out.
If I’m lucky I’ve another 40/50 years on this planet I feel for my daughter who will have to deal with shit that has been caused by me and others of my generation. Let’s face it the planet won’t miss us when we are gone but we will miss it when it’s gone.

Naturally, this could easily happen.

For every action there is a natural reaction. When the first bacteria grew, their numbers will have got unsustainable and other kinds of bacteria evolved that fed on the original bacteria. When plants grew, aphids evolved to feed on them, then predictors came to feed on them, and them, and them...

Up in Scotland, we can hunt and kill wild deer because the particular part of Scotland their habitat lies is small, and if their numbers grow too large they can either eat too much of their grasses and start to starve to death because of a lack of food or their numbers and small territory means that disease spreads and they die. To stop either of these things happening we have intervened and started keeping their numbers in check.

With humans, there isn’t another species keeping our numbers in check, and we aren’t doing it ourselves. Eventually, there will be a natural reaction from the planet where we can’t sustain the food needed to feed everyone and there could be mass starvation; or mass starvation due to plants stopping growing or becoming toxic due to climate change. Or the seas could lose their currents due to the increase in non-saline water melting into it, and the knock-on effects of that would be devastating.

Also a natural reaction to being too many of us and us living too close to wildlife that we shouldn’t be, could be that a real pandemic could wipe billions of us out. Something with a long incubation period that is widely spread and kills after a few weeks could easily pop up some day soon! There have been over 60 potential pandemic events since the turn of the Century. Nearly all of them have not become pandemics, but this Coronavirus has. Thankfully, it’s not been a serious one. It’s had a long incubation period and is widely spread but it’s not particularly deadly. But one day, maybe in our lifetime, something really bad could happen.

Look at what happens to viruses and pandemics themselves:


There is always a sharp rise and a peak and a sharp decline. Then look at the correlation between those and human population growth. We’re still on the rise, but we are acting like a virus to the planet and eventually there will be a natural reaction to see humans peak and then decline.

The only thing that will stop it is if we stop acting like a virus.

Everywhere that humans have been on the planet, going back tens of thousands of years, we have wiped out or started to wipe out the megafauna of that area. Of the all the megafauna that have ever lived while humans have been around, humans have made 60% of them extinct and have put nearly all the rest on the endangered species list. If you look at the human population as a megafauna, there’s only one way we head when you look at the trend of all the others.

 

[inbetween]

It's a fair point. If China doesn't start to wean itself off coal whatever the rest of us do will have no effect. The answer is not to think 'fuck it' though, it's to put pressure on China to do what's right.

I can't see pressure on China really working because China has no world view on anything except for its economy. Their economy is so strong now that any sanctions are very likely to fail given the retaliatory sanctions will very likely harm the sanctioning country more.

The US is probably the worst of the lot given they are just ignoring the problem so we can't exempt them either. How do we put pressure on the US to change? We all know the problem there is political so even the Biden administration will choose jobs and economy over the environment.

Meanwhile the protesters will continue to protest here about our falling 0.5% contribution. They will lie down in Parliament Square but I wonder if they'll ever face facts and go and lie down in Tiananmen Square?

We have to ask though in terms of technology what is actually being spent on anything worthwhile? We once led the way in car manufacturing so where is our Tesla equivalent? Unfortunately much of technology sectors have fallen into the rabbit hole of globalisation, we seem to still make things but we don't create things anymore.

 

[west didsblue]

I can't see pressure on China really working because China has no world view on anything except for its economy. Their economy is so strong now that any sanctions are very likely to fail given the retaliatory sanctions will very likely harm the sanctioning country more.

The US is probably the worst of the lot given they are just ignoring the problem so we can't exempt them either. How do we put pressure on the US to change? We all know the problem there is political so even the Biden administration will choose jobs and economy over the environment.

Meanwhile the protesters will continue to protest here about our falling 0.5% contribution. They will lie down in Parliament Square but I wonder if they'll ever face facts and go and lie down in Tiananmen Square?

We have to ask though in terms of technology what is actually being spent on anything worthwhile? We once led the way in car manufacturing so where is our Tesla equivalent? Unfortunately much of technology sectors have fallen into the rabbit hole of globalisation, we seem to still make things but we don't create things anymore.

China burns 6 times as much coal as the US, and it's not fair to say that the US is ignoring the problem. Although they had a climate change denying idiot in charge for the last 4 years who actively wanted to burn more fossil fuels, the reality is that the states took the lead and coal consumption went down nearly 40% during his tenure due to the growth of renewables and gas production (which is far less damaging than coal). The US is heading in the right direction and now that they've got someone who's not a complete idiot in charge this should improve further. On the other hand in China, although the use of renewables is increasing fast, so is the burning of coal, and until that gets resolved we're all on a slippery slope.