Climate Crisis: Our Last Chance
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I have mentioned previously the over-populationists I come across on my web travels.
Here is a comment as an example
A one child limit on births for each and every child rearing/fertile unit of two persons would result in a 50% reduction in earth’s human population in one generation. 7.7 billion reduced to just under 4 billion in one generation…Instead of UBI and UBS, we should pay people to voluntarily block their fertility after their first child.
https://commons.commondreams.org/t/a-viable-human-future-depends-on-living-with-less/131248/19
“A one child limit on births for each and every child rearing/fertile unit of two persons would result in a 50% reduction in earth’s human population in one generation. 7.7 billion reduced to just under 4 billion in one generation…Instead of UBI and UBS, we should pay people to voluntarily block their fertility after their first child.”
What a really sad ideology! Birth control as a welfare payment to the working class and the precariat. Birth as a financial privilege (dominant classes able to freely give birth: another class who are in poverty and have no finance surrender their reproductive rights after the first child just to receive a payment).
Smacks of reproductive control and a commodification of the womb. Wonder who is sterilized: will their thinking fall heavily on women? That is another question!
We have enough resources to our current and future populations, bar the coagulation of wealth and productive resource controlled in the apex structure.
I am reminded of Ian Banks and Ken Macleod literary comments on money: wherever their is money there will be poverty.
Our people are our wealth… every countless one of us is precious.Don’t know why it is not appearing but
L.B. Neill wrote:“A one child limit on births for each and every
child rearing/fertile unit of two persons would
result in a 50% reduction in earth’s human
population in one generation. 7.7 billion reduced
to just under 4 billion in one
generation…Instead of UBI and UBS, we should pay
people to voluntarily block their fertility after
their first child.”What a really sad ideology! Birth control as a
welfare payment to the working class and the
precariat. Birth as a financial privilege
(dominant classes able to freely give birth:
another class who are in poverty and have no
finance surrender their reproductive rights after
the first child just to receive a payment…
Smacks of reproductive control and a
commodification of the womb. Wonder who is
sterilized: will their thinking fall heavily on
women? That is another question!
We have enough resources to our current and future
populations, bar the coagulation of wealth and
productive resource controlled in the apex
structure.
I am reminded of Ian Banks and Ken Macleod
literary comments on money: wherever their is
money there will be poverty.
Our people are our wealth… every countless one
of us is precious.Post Link:
People are intuitively against urban living especially when they know of Mumbai and Mexico City over-crowding. Yet very high population densities has not affected the lives of those living in the Netherlands or Belgium.
This article suggests that inner city-living is ecologically friendlier than the suburban sprawl.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/22/cities-climate-change-dense-sprawl-yimby-nimby
the US are typically sprawling and heavily dependent on cars – at just 283 people per square mile, the average American city is more than 100 times less densely populated than Paris or BarcelonaAnother scare-mongering click-bait article?
The different scenarios
There are two lower-emissions scenarios in the report, the lowest of which keeps the temperature rise by the century’s end under 1.5 degrees (after exceeding it briefly), but a quick analysis from MIT’s Technology Review points out that this scenario relies mainly on highly speculative “negative emissions” technologies, especially carbon capture and storage, and a shift toward the massive-scale use of biomass (i.e. crops and trees) for energy. We know that a more widespread use of “energy crops” would consume vast areas of the earth’s landmass, and that the regrowing of trees that are cut down to burn for energy would take many decades to absorb the initial carbon release– a scenario the earth clearly cannot afford. The lower-emissions scenarios also accept the prevailing rhetoric of “net-zero,” assuming that more widespread carbon-sequestering methods like protecting forests can serve to compensate for still-rising emissions. We know that many if not most carbon offset schemes to date have been an absolute failure, with Indigenous peoples often driven from their traditional lands in the name of “forest protection,” only to see rates of commercial logging increase rapidly in immediately surrounding areas.
the 2015 Paris Agreement, with some countries now aiming to achieve a peak in climate-altering emissions by mid-century… only approaches the middle range of the IPCC’s latest projections. The scenario based on a 2050 emissions peak is right in the middle of the report’s range of predictions, and shows the world surpassing the important threshold of 1.5 degrees of average warming in the early 2030s, exceeding 2 degrees by mid-century, and reaching an average temperature increase between 2.1 and 3.5 degrees (approximately 4 – 6 degrees Fahrenheit) between 2080 and 2100, nearly two and a half times the current global average temperature rise of 1.1 degrees since preindustrial times.
If carbon emissions continue to increase at current rates, we are looking at a best estimate of a 3.6 degree rise before the end of this century, with a likely range reaching well above 4 degrees – often viewed as a rough threshold for a complete collapse of the climate system.
The author’s conclusion is:
It is increasingly doubtful that genuine long-term climate solutions can be found without a thorough transformation of social and economic systems…Not even the landmark Biden-Sanders budget reconciliation plan that is under consideration in in the US Congress, with all its necessary and helpful climate measures, addresses the full magnitude of changes that are needed to halt emissions by midcentury.No, that seems quite a good summary. The scenario he quotes is what is likely to happen if all the plans announced by governments so far are actually implemented — rise to 2 degrees C by mid century and to a “very likely” range to between 2.1 to 3.5 with the “best estimate” being to 2.7 by the end of the century.
He is right that “a thorough transformation of social and economic systems” would be necessary to achieve the best case scenario of to 1.6 by mid century and between 1.0 and 1.8 by the end of the century with the best estimate of 1.4.
Unfortunately, I don’t think he is thinking of socialism. So unless we get socialism the Paris Agreement aim of an increase of only 1.5 by the end of the century is not going to be achieved.
Mentioned in passing in my Discord talk was that BP invented the carbon footprint as a diversion to place the blame on individuals
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2021/08/sustainable-socialism.html
But to demonstrate it was no conspiracy theory there is this article
https://in.mashable.com/science/15520/the-carbon-footprint-sham
BP wants you to accept responsibility for the globally disrupted climate. Just like beverage industrialists wanted people to feel bad about the amassing pollution created by their plastics and cans, or more sinisterly, tobacco companies blamed smokers for becoming addicted to addictive carcinogenic products. We’ve seen this manipulative playbook before, and BP played it well.
The oil industry is resistant
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-58321884The banking industry is resistant
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/08/24/central-banks-accused-dawdling-climate-world-burnsAn article on geo-engineering
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/26/planet-earth-climate-crisis-geoengineering
But an interesting side-issue raised
It would require international cooperation and vast overhauls of infrastructure. It would also mean that the United States and other capitalist countries would have to reorient themselves to a more centrally planned economy, devoted less to maximizing growth than to minimizing carbon. It would mean overcoming vast political differences and competing incentives the world over in order to unite in global common cause.But Buck thinks that the incentives for cooperation in the existential climate intervention project are great enough to ensure at least some success.
“I do think that if people share a common goal, they might disagree about how to reach that goal, but maybe just having the common goal is enough,” she says.
Is Biden really responding to the climate crisis?
Biden’s federal officials will soon resume selling new leases for oil and gas drilling on public lands and waters in response to court rulings against the moratorium on it.
As seen in other countries, the law supersedes the planet
Public Citizen president Robert Weissman called the Biden administration’s disclosure “distressing news”.
“The first, easiest steps to address the climate crisis are to stop making things worse,” said Weissman. “More oil and gas leasing is insane policy in light of the climate crisis.”
25% of the nation’s total carbon emissions can be attributed to fossil fuel extraction on public lands and waters.
Yet another green reform which will prove ineffective
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/uk-deforestation-law-climate-change-b1908714.html
environmental charity WWF found exemptions included in the new law mean it “may have a limited impact” on curbing deforestation linked to UK supply chains.The warming blob
We often describe it as global warming but it can be quite localised
the blob had warmed 1.5C over the 40 year period, about three times the global average increase in sea surface temperature.
The USA infrastructure are not prepared for the new climate change. Scientists said several years ago, that starms were going to be stronger, more frequents, and would become stronger in a few hours, and the destruction were going to be bigger too
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