Carbon Output Must Near Zero To Avert Danger, New Studies Say in the Washington Post:
The task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures may be far more difficult than previous research suggested, say scientists who have just published studies indicating that it would require the world to cease carbon emissions altogether within a matter of decades.
“People aren’t reducing emissions at all, let alone debating whether 88 percent or 99 percent is sufficient,” said Gavin A. Schmidt, of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “It’s like you’re starting off on a road trip from New York to California, and before you even start, you’re arguing about where you’re going to park at the end.”
Steve Gardiner, a philosophy professor at the University of Washington who studies climate change, said the studies highlight that the argument over global warming “is a classic inter-generational debate, where the short-term benefits of emitting carbon accrue mainly to us and where the dangers of them are largely put off until future generations.”
People aren’t reducing emissions at all. That’s the most basic starting point of all my philosophical musings on the nature of social existence. It’s as if we’re all waiting for the installation of some oldfashioned Red Indian Chief as the New Ruler of The World. -
http://www.iea.org/textbase/papers/2007/fs_co2.pdf
http://www.iea.org/Textbase/subjectqueries/keyresult.asp?KEYWORD_ID=4107
“World leaders have pledged to act to change the energy future. Some new policies are in place. But the trends in energy demand, imports, coal use and greenhouse gas emissions to 2030 in WEO-2007 are even worse than projected in WEO-2006.”
Mulig, the same is true in the AEO-2008 report from the IEA (of the US DOE), the pre-release summary of which is available now. All official projections of fossil fuel use are up, up, up.
[...] On the one hand we have increasingly alarming reports on global warming, climate change, and actions required. On the other hand we have statistical evidence indicating that humanity as a whole is not ready to make any admissions. All official projections of fossil fuel use are up, up, up. [...]
I believe the only good way forward would be to stop talking about “the reduction of CO2 emissions,” but instead start talking about “the reduction of fossil fuels consumption.” It is a trick of the mind, this. As “reduction of CO2 emissions” is an undertaking which involves factories and power plants (for starters), while the “reduction of fossil fuels consumption” would be a thing that involves actual human beings of flesh and blood as well. We need to do something about the fossil fuels consumption. And we’re in need of a language that can make that happen.
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