Hi everyone, I want to hear from you! This is about doing what’s necessary NOT what’s doable. Let’s pretend you’re the final decision maker at COP26. You have full authority. You have access to trillions of dollars. You’re being guided by the science and not fossil fuel companies or billionaires. Promises of future technology are great but there needs to be an immediate reduction in emissions in order to buy time to
I've been communicating with a Facebook group about the emerging field of climate change education. It came to my attention that a resource published by a prominent Alberta environmental education group ends with logos and statements from six or seven oil companies, and suggests getting students busy "acting" on climate change, as (they claim) clearly decades of trying to give people knowledge hasn't worked to get them to reduce their carbon footprints. Some more digging found three other educational groups with direct oil funding, RBC funding or industry-related inputs. I also became aware that the term "fossil fuels" is absent from any teaching "framing." Sidestep to the latest IPCC science report (AR6, August 2021), where the words "fossil fuels" are not used in the Summary for Policymakers (SPM), which makes it impossible to refer to any sectors - or even economies - that use them. Fossil fuels is not the subject of any sentence to describe the current climate crisis. Only "emissions" and "gases" and "pollutants" are blamed, all of them simply produced by non-categoriezed "humans." Aha! We're not allowed to say "fossil fuels" in education as they aren't at the COP! And the oil companies are moving in on the new field of climate change education to rally the troops, sound sympathetic and (now) in agreement with the scientific consensus, and deflect everyone's guilty attention to his or her "carbon footprint" onto personal action. Meanwhile, we hear (https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/worlds-governments-must-wind-down-fossil-fuel-production-6-year) we must drastically reduce/get off fossil fuels to have a change at staying below 2C. Interesting that no one is teaching the kids that fact. That's the one that needs to be avoided at all cost by the world's biggest and richest industry, it appears. We need to say "fossil fuels" of we're going to be able to tackle this problem together. This is worth writing about. (The same IPCC Science AR6 "full report" puts fossil fuels as being responsible for 86% (plus or minus 14 points) of the last decade's warming. Not mentioned to the policymakers.)
I'm not sure how blue-sky or entirely plausible you wanted the answers to be, so take this with a grain of salt:
The ideas of a carbon tax or cap and trade were flawed from the outset as they allowed industries to game the systems and because they focussed on the carbon rather than the means by which the carbon was being created. The focus needs to instead be on the resources being depleted that lead to greenhouse gas emissions, as well as water tables and biodiversity. Assign a value to all those externalities that polluting corporations have used or impacted without paying, both inputs and outputs, from the water table and fuel inputs to carbon and pollutant outputs, as well as the on-flow effects of these.
Unite all of the national and international bodies that currently give due weight to climate change (and that includes the US military*) and, with them, demand that all of the world's natural resources be assigned governing bodies with full legally binding power under international law. The role of these bodies is to charge companies for resource use, commensurate with the impact of that resource's depletion and the resultant greenhouse gas emissions. Industries with long lead times will have time to divest and diversify, but much of the R&D has been done and been suppressed or is within current capabilities. Industries with higher impact will have much higher costs associated with failure to change.
In the case of the oil industry, for example, set an ambitious but realistic target for change to the extraction of minerals associated with battery technology and/or the manufacture of hydrogen and other alternative fuels and/or carbon capture and sequestration technologies, and facilitate this transition by assigning costs to failure:
Are you still extracting oil at that well at the end of this year? $1 million fine.
Are you still extracting oil at that well at the end of next year? $1 billion fine.
And the year after that? $10 billion fine.
Once there is an actual cost associated with the use of natural resources, rather than a theorized, some way off in the future cost to other people, then the cost-benefit analysis tips markedly in the favour of increased R&D and rapid deployment.
These bodies should also be tasked with actually facilitating the changes required. They can do this by working with these companies and corporations, providing current research and the individuals that can apply that research.
To note: the idea is to have these bodies focussing on small enough resources or regions that they are manageable and that there are enough such bodies that 'capture' by vested interests is not possible. So, for example, in a given region, there would be separate bodies for the water table, biodiversity, local human health and well-being and so on.
I had planned to sit down and write this over the weekend, but have just sat down and done it now, over the space of 20 minutes or so, so please excuse the scattered nature of the above.
Here is a link to something positive that is happening right now - lasting all week. World conference on solutions!!! So...... Time to stop moaning about the problem and do something. Hope you like it xxx First half hour looks AMAZING!!! https://hopin.com/events/daring-cities-2021
A whole New System is what is needed!! And it can be found in Doughnut Economics!! Look it up!! Spread the word!! ASAP!!! Some (very advanced?? very brave?? very sensible??) places are considering it: Amsterdam; Costa Rica; parts of Berlin; parts of England; New Zealand is looking. Loads of people have heard of it and if you read the book or watch some videos, you will find technical details about why we have had GDP (leading to the 0.0001% and Capitalism etc) for so long and why even 'they' would be able and maybe even willing to change. Here is a short link to a video clip (6 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ziw-wK03TSw&t=134s and here is a longer one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_WPzDVpKvw. Here is a solution rather than just plain criticism. Spread the word. Please. ASAP!!! Here is a tool we can use to challenge COP26!! It may well work!!!
You say "A culture [of capitalism] that tells us that government is wasteful and corrupt and that you cannot trust them with your money." As a Canadian, perhaps you don't understand how absolutely true this statement is. You mention Musk and other technologists. All are on your list and all buy politicians. Like many of us you see the manipulations on the right by giant corporations. Don't miss the same thing on the left. Who do you think is pushing Biden to put the high tech agenda into his infrastructure bills - a couple trillion to that set of billionaires.
You can't trust corporate America or the US financial system manipulators. But even less trustworthy are the US politicians that they buy.
So sorry, you don't have a viable option at this stage. Bought and paid for governments will NOT be helping us.
I've been communicating with a Facebook group about the emerging field of climate change education. It came to my attention that a resource published by a prominent Alberta environmental education group ends with logos and statements from six or seven oil companies, and suggests getting students busy "acting" on climate change, as (they claim) clearly decades of trying to give people knowledge hasn't worked to get them to reduce their carbon footprints. Some more digging found three other educational groups with direct oil funding, RBC funding or industry-related inputs. I also became aware that the term "fossil fuels" is absent from any teaching "framing." Sidestep to the latest IPCC science report (AR6, August 2021), where the words "fossil fuels" are not used in the Summary for Policymakers (SPM), which makes it impossible to refer to any sectors - or even economies - that use them. Fossil fuels is not the subject of any sentence to describe the current climate crisis. Only "emissions" and "gases" and "pollutants" are blamed, all of them simply produced by non-categoriezed "humans." Aha! We're not allowed to say "fossil fuels" in education as they aren't at the COP! And the oil companies are moving in on the new field of climate change education to rally the troops, sound sympathetic and (now) in agreement with the scientific consensus, and deflect everyone's guilty attention to his or her "carbon footprint" onto personal action. Meanwhile, we hear (https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/worlds-governments-must-wind-down-fossil-fuel-production-6-year) we must drastically reduce/get off fossil fuels to have a change at staying below 2C. Interesting that no one is teaching the kids that fact. That's the one that needs to be avoided at all cost by the world's biggest and richest industry, it appears. We need to say "fossil fuels" of we're going to be able to tackle this problem together. This is worth writing about. (The same IPCC Science AR6 "full report" puts fossil fuels as being responsible for 86% (plus or minus 14 points) of the last decade's warming. Not mentioned to the policymakers.)
I'm not sure how blue-sky or entirely plausible you wanted the answers to be, so take this with a grain of salt:
The ideas of a carbon tax or cap and trade were flawed from the outset as they allowed industries to game the systems and because they focussed on the carbon rather than the means by which the carbon was being created. The focus needs to instead be on the resources being depleted that lead to greenhouse gas emissions, as well as water tables and biodiversity. Assign a value to all those externalities that polluting corporations have used or impacted without paying, both inputs and outputs, from the water table and fuel inputs to carbon and pollutant outputs, as well as the on-flow effects of these.
Unite all of the national and international bodies that currently give due weight to climate change (and that includes the US military*) and, with them, demand that all of the world's natural resources be assigned governing bodies with full legally binding power under international law. The role of these bodies is to charge companies for resource use, commensurate with the impact of that resource's depletion and the resultant greenhouse gas emissions. Industries with long lead times will have time to divest and diversify, but much of the R&D has been done and been suppressed or is within current capabilities. Industries with higher impact will have much higher costs associated with failure to change.
In the case of the oil industry, for example, set an ambitious but realistic target for change to the extraction of minerals associated with battery technology and/or the manufacture of hydrogen and other alternative fuels and/or carbon capture and sequestration technologies, and facilitate this transition by assigning costs to failure:
Are you still extracting oil at that well at the end of this year? $1 million fine.
Are you still extracting oil at that well at the end of next year? $1 billion fine.
And the year after that? $10 billion fine.
Once there is an actual cost associated with the use of natural resources, rather than a theorized, some way off in the future cost to other people, then the cost-benefit analysis tips markedly in the favour of increased R&D and rapid deployment.
These bodies should also be tasked with actually facilitating the changes required. They can do this by working with these companies and corporations, providing current research and the individuals that can apply that research.
To note: the idea is to have these bodies focussing on small enough resources or regions that they are manageable and that there are enough such bodies that 'capture' by vested interests is not possible. So, for example, in a given region, there would be separate bodies for the water table, biodiversity, local human health and well-being and so on.
I had planned to sit down and write this over the weekend, but have just sat down and done it now, over the space of 20 minutes or so, so please excuse the scattered nature of the above.
*https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2021/01/27/climate-change-is-now-a-national-security-priority-for-the-pentagon/
Here is a link to something positive that is happening right now - lasting all week. World conference on solutions!!! So...... Time to stop moaning about the problem and do something. Hope you like it xxx First half hour looks AMAZING!!! https://hopin.com/events/daring-cities-2021
A whole New System is what is needed!! And it can be found in Doughnut Economics!! Look it up!! Spread the word!! ASAP!!! Some (very advanced?? very brave?? very sensible??) places are considering it: Amsterdam; Costa Rica; parts of Berlin; parts of England; New Zealand is looking. Loads of people have heard of it and if you read the book or watch some videos, you will find technical details about why we have had GDP (leading to the 0.0001% and Capitalism etc) for so long and why even 'they' would be able and maybe even willing to change. Here is a short link to a video clip (6 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ziw-wK03TSw&t=134s and here is a longer one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_WPzDVpKvw. Here is a solution rather than just plain criticism. Spread the word. Please. ASAP!!! Here is a tool we can use to challenge COP26!! It may well work!!!
You say "A culture [of capitalism] that tells us that government is wasteful and corrupt and that you cannot trust them with your money." As a Canadian, perhaps you don't understand how absolutely true this statement is. You mention Musk and other technologists. All are on your list and all buy politicians. Like many of us you see the manipulations on the right by giant corporations. Don't miss the same thing on the left. Who do you think is pushing Biden to put the high tech agenda into his infrastructure bills - a couple trillion to that set of billionaires.
You can't trust corporate America or the US financial system manipulators. But even less trustworthy are the US politicians that they buy.
So sorry, you don't have a viable option at this stage. Bought and paid for governments will NOT be helping us.