NOT JUST CARBON

Sometimes somebody writes something that is too long and too ideological and yet it deserves a sounding. Here is an example. If only…

It’s Not Just About the Carbon
Jim Miles, October 1, 2007 (Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel)

WHO
Citizens of Western “consumerist” societies, you and NewEnergyNews.

click to enlarge

WHAT
Miles cites reports on climate change that conclude it is too late to take significant action and then argues it is not true if The Consumer Society realizes it must become A Sustainable Society.

WHEN
Both the National Geographic assessment and the Foreign Policy assessment cited by Miles say it is already too late to do anything but prepare for the coming changes.

WHERE
Worldwide loss of species…species into new areas…worse storms and hurricanes…heat and rain…rising sea levels…agricultural changes, habitat loss…melting ice caps…a European ice age due to changes in the ‘Atlantic conveyor’ heat exchange…etc.

WHY
- Transportation needs to change…carbon taxes…carbon credits…carbon emissions caps…But no legislation or action is taken. Research goes on largely unapplied…Governments call for efficiency and conservation…Nuclear energy…solar power, wind power, and tidal power don’t emerge…
- Britain’s Stern Review says climate change can be turned into an economic opportunity if investment is adequate. In other words, spend more.
- What is needed: New thinking, new actions, new lifestyle, new society. (1) End militarism; (2) Change economics from growth to sustainable growth; (3) Consumers must take personal responsibility for the consequences of their actions.

It's all about the choices we make. (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
- Carbon’s New Math (National Geographic): “No matter what we do now, that warming will increase some—there’s a lag time before the heat fully plays out in the atmosphere. That is, we can’t stop global warming.”
- Why Climate Change Can’t Be Stopped (Foreign Policy): “But the mounting scientific evidence, coupled along with economic and political realities, increasingly suggests that humanity’s opportunity to prevent, stop, or reverse the long-term impacts of climate change has slipped away.”
- Stern Review on the economics of climate change: “Ultimately, stabilization—at whatever level—requires that annual emissions be brought down to more than 80% below current levels.”
- Miles: It is now recognized that global warming is happening, that it is happening faster than expected, that in order to reduce carbon output we need to make changes to our usage of carbon-consuming compounds. I have argued here that carbon is not the cause, it is simply the scapegoat. The real cause, the real culprit is you and I, those of us within the huge consumptive and unsustainable free market economy that obsessively quests for growth in a finite world. The changes that need to be made need to occur at all levels of society, from personal actions broadening out to civic, federal and international actions that create a radically less consumptive world with significantly more freedom and societal health for all humanity.