 | The Bullroarer - Tuesday 1st April 2008 | TOD: Australia/New Zealand | Concentrating On The Important Things - Solar Thermal Power |  |
179 comments on Hansen to Australian PM: stop coal plants now
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I think what Cslater8 is trying to say is that there is a vast chasm between where we are now and where we would need to be if we were to replace CO2-emitting forms of transport. And getting global agreement to make that transition in a timely enough fashion is extremely unlikely because of the realities of our money-delineated global free market economy. Sure, if governments actually took some decisive action on a vast scale, or people started to take this issue seriously, we might get to where we need to be in time. But on current progress that just ain't gonna happen. The required changes are just too vast.
Specifically - electricity - where's it going to come from? Renewables currently produce a small fraction of current consumption, disregarding the probable doubling in demand if we also use if for ground transportation, whether directly or through production of hydrogen. And train and barges could theoretically be part of the solution too, but most of the world's infrastructure has been built around other modes of transport. Adopting more energy-efficient modes will take a very significant amount of time and effort.
It's all theoretically solvable, but who can honestly believe that the solution will be achieved in time? We're running out of that commodity very fast and there are few signs that any of the required changes will take place in anything like the necessary timescale.
This is the reality of the situation, and hope alone won't solve our problems, I'm afraid. We shouldn't abandon hope, but as time goes on the solutions look farther and farther away.
ncollingridge, Just wanted to let you know I agree with your post completely. I work my own business so only have so much time to devote to responses, but do appreciate your elequent version of my somewhat cut and dry response. And just so you know the other reply posts are not for you. Thanks, Cslater8 in California
Well, essentially what you're saying here is that positive change is slow and difficult.
Sure. But we should still give it a go. If we try, maybe things won't improve. If we don't try, definitely they won't improve.
I'll take possible failure over certain failure any day of the week. "Resigned apathy" is not a state of mind I've ever found useful.
Yes, we may fail if we try. But if we don't try we'll definitely fail. May as well give it a go.
What do I do? Well, there's the individual and the general: I work towards a one-tonne CO2 lifestyle as an individual, and for the general each season I sit down and write a letter to each of my local, state and federal representatives.
Maybe they don't listen, but we can't complain they don't listen if we don't speak. And I think they do listen. For the last month in my local newspaper the front page news has been, of all things, the removal of a single Australia Post mailbox. It was only getting six letters a day so AP removed it and told the people to just walk to the next one. But that's 650m further and the little old ladies in the neighbourhood are upset. The state MP has protested to Australia Post, called up the federal Communications Minister, and is going to bring it up in State Parliament as part of a general critique of the (public owned) Australia Post.
The State MP got 25 letters on it. And now it's being brought up in State Parliament, this extraordinarily trivial thing, a single bloody postbox.
So I write to my councillors, and state and federal MPs. Maybe mine will be the letter that, on top of all the rest, makes them bring the issue up in Parliament. It certainly can't do any harm.
Or I could just sit around and cry into my beer and say it's all hopeless. Which would be what they call a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Change your life, and once a season write to your elected representatives about the issues of the day. You've got nothing to lose but your resigned apathy.