Next time someone talks to you about Carbon offsetting, or emmissions trading, say:
"It is impossible to offset carbon emissions from sources such as coal and fossil oil, which are pumped/dug out of the ground, by planting trees.
Our biosphere has reached a dynamic carbon balance over tens of thousands of years which did not include buried carbon deposits. All carbon from these sources is extra to nature's requirements. Furthermore, most people will be planting trees in places which have been cleared of their original vegetation/ecology. As we all know, the primary destruction of wilderness/ecology releases climate warming gases into the atmosphere, reduces our carbon carrying capacity, and destroys biodiversity (biodiversity is essential for the survival of life on our planet - actually biodiversity is life on our planet) Planting trees or growing crops such as biofuels on land which has been cleared of it's original vegetation does not put us in 'Carbon Credit', the best it can ever do is make up for all the trees which have been cut down or burnt in the past.
Trees don't need us to plant them, they can actually grow by themselves!!!(if we stop killing them)"
"Carbon emissions trading doesn't stop carbon being released into the atmosphere, it just makes carbon a salable commodity!.
My contribution to offsetting emissions is to make my own personal reduction in all the hot air floating around about offsetting carbon emissions - talk to the hand!"
Peace
Bill Lesser
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alternative to emissions trading?
what's yours?
emissions trading has problems, but i challenge you or anyone else to come up with something better which (and here's the rub) has any chance of actually being implemented in a liberal democratic, capitalist, society
Reactonary
No argument there really, I agree.
To be honest my posts up till now have been pretty much dominated by simply feeling angry about some of the things this website is promoting in the name of positive change. (namely biofuels)
I apologise for not being more forthcoming with positive ideas, but, I'm staggered by the size of what we are talking about, and I can't really imagine much of a solution to the problem of 6.6 billion (and rising) people all believing that they have a born right to their own motor vehicle and abundant supply of electricity.
With a local focus, how can we expect biofuels to be managed responsibly by the same company who has been fighting aggressively for years in court and in the media for the authority and righteousness to destroy irreplaceable and unique wilderness.
They will be produced industrially, as cheaply as possible, with as little regard to the environment as possible, using as little labour as possible, and marketed as effectively as possible with the aim of selling as much as possible.
In Aotearoa, and internationally, biofuels are owned and controlled by the same people who have been cooking the climate for the last 50 years.
I'd love to propose some positive alternatives, but right now I feel like smashing my computer because B the Change is posing as a catalyst for positive change, and promoting the same trash that put us in the gurgler.
I don't have time to post it tonight, but I'm going fossil, and biofuel free in transport.
I know there are a myriad of other ways which we rely on unsustainable energy sources, but hey, I'm finding it easy to make time for thinking about it.
Thanks Rimu
Bill Lesser XXX
yep, the scale of the problem is incredibly vast
I know where you're coming from; the scale of the problem is incredibly vast and at this early stage it often looks too much.
Climate change raises fundamental questions about our society; the capitalist idea that you can have continual economic growth forever, in a finite world might turn out to be a complete fantasy, and one that people are unwilling to change from...
There isn't going to be a silver bullet that magically, in one stroke, solves 'it', so don't expect it to turn up. This is going to take decades, with uncertain results.
For example, everyone knows that kyoto's targets are extremely modest and don't go anywhere near far enough. But it is also pretty clear that it is an important first step, and once it is successful we can look at what the second step will be.
Small improvements are better than nothing, in that they work towards the big improvements.
Early Warming
This isn't an early stage of the problem, the problem of climate change has been talked about for least 30 years, IPCC has more or less been issuing dire warnings for since 2001, the practices leading to climate change have been going on for???
We are at the early stages of mainstream media and mainstream perception talking about it as something 'real'.
We are at the early stages of realising the kinds of disasters which have been talked about for a long time.
Kyoto protocol is a product of the capitalist system which believes in (and is based on)infinite economic growth. (you don't need to be an economist, or a scientist, or literate to understand how ridiculous and potentially disastrous that concept is) What does that make kyoto protocol?
Are these things really small improvements?
Bill Lesser XXX
yes
they are. anything is better than nothing.
?
Just chucking some ideas up there:
The third world faces massive hardship and millions upon millions of deaths while we argue over what's manageable for us in order to keep our standard of living, (remember, climate change is a problem largely created and driven by developed, 'richer' countries.) and we justify our on-the-moderate side solutions as 'better than nothing'
The political/economic system which we adhere to has been waging bloody war in the middle east over energy>fuel>oil for ? years (a million dead in Iraq?) and we still expect this system to provide us with solutions which will result in a better world?
Energy>fuel>biofuels
Where will the next endless war be?
(Africa's shaping up pretty well don't you think?)
The best predictions we have tell us that Global Warming will be a series of small and huge disasters in a spectrum of ways.....one outcome being that we will be working harder to cope with the effects of climate change than in prospering. (ie: we spend all of our energy repairing damage and dealing with crises rather than......anything else of value we might want to do)
Will Kyoto protocol, or the transportation needs of a 1st world society, or greenwashing continue to stand in the way of people acting to create positive change?
Prediction: The Kyoto protocol will be used by the status quo to continue doing what they have always done: As little as they can get away with.
(If we stand for it)
Bill Lesser XXX