- Population growth: This is a hugely critical issue that is avoided mainly out of fear of being accused of racism or eugenic imperialism. But the talk doesn't have to be about population control but about population wisdom. It's not state rules that will alter this but a cultural acceptance of smaller families across the world as well as the wider availability of birth control.
- Economic growth - Our climate crisis is due in part to the elite's assumption that economic growth is a great gift to people. But what if it also destroys the planet? Where are the alternative economic philosophies and reflect the needs of climate calming?
- Transportation: Not moving around so much is a great way to help calm the climate. Why is this gerting so little attention?
September 5, 2019
What we avoid in talking about climate change
Sam Smith - There are a number of climate issues that deserve far more attention than they've gotten, such as:
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Very few of us find math and its bastard child statistics sexy, hence the lack of conversation about the core disease, in lieu of the symptom being easily alleviated through salacious transition to a green economy. Jobs! Grrrowth! Clean Air! How could you rain on our parade with facts?
As the consummate consumers, we Americans, although only 5% of the global population, will consume 25% of the resources produced this tour around the sun. If the ultimate goal is for the whole planet to live like an American, we will need 4 more Earths just to supply the inputs for the 7 billion here now. Now on those 4 other Earths, there can be no population except that which are involved in the direct extraction and shipping of inputs to Mother Earth. Want to grow a planet of Americans beyond 7 billion? Better have Earths 5, 6, 7 and 8 all lined up and ready to rape.
The inconvenient truth is that modern capitalism is the cause of our conundrum. Keeping the consumer cooled in the summer and heated in the winter, along with the steady stream of widgets to consume, is responsible for more than half of all the things that are causing the climate conniptions. Electricity production, heating, and industry are 55% of the climate altering emissions. Transportation is another 14%.
In the bold new green economy, no one will be asked to consume or travel less. They will be encouraged to do it by replacing the infernal combustion driven conveyance for one powered by Lithium Ion Batteries. Clean! See! No emissions! The failure will come in the ignorance of trading one toxic energy carrier for another. In our previous paradigm, we used liquid fuels to store energy until it was at the point and time at which it was needed. Burning that energy produced gas and particulate matter that has buggered the climate. Lithium, however is not inert.
Currently there is no economically feasible means by which you can reclaim Lithium from a battery at the end of its life-cycle, or when cast aside for the next whimsy. Therefore, no amount of recycled lithium is being used in the production of current or foreseeable batteries that will transition us to a green economy. They are not housed for potential due to their highly volatile nature especially at higher temperatures. Our current solution is to sequester them in landfills. Landfills constructed by the lowest bidder. Tell me that liner was installed properly.
Lithium is highly toxic and stands to be just as much a problem for groundwater as fossil fuels have been for the atmosphere. The science is undeniable. All anyone has to do is want to enter the terms “Lithium Toxicity” into a search engine. Try and broach the subject with an activist. The knee jerk reactionary responses are both frightening and telling. No-one wants to admit that the techno-orgy is not sustainable. If I could bottle the reaction, it would be a surefire elixir guaranteed to aid in the termination of relationships, leases, fiscal and personal obligations.
Thanks 2:06
I agree that those who think that new untested unproven technology will do the work of carbon capture and clean energy are mistaken. Besides any issues of being not fully developed and/or unproven, these new technological fixes usually take more energy and material costs then they will produce in benefits. We will need to change they way we do a lot of things, and we need to use already proven techniques, if we want to have the impact we need in the time available.
One energy source that would be cleaner, and can be done on both an industrial scale or a home scale is Biogas. Biogas is made using biodigesters that take compostable wastes, and with anaerobic composting turns the compostables into methane for fuel, and compost for agriculture, if the inputs are non toxic, or if coming from toxic sources creates a more manageable waste of reduced volume. Methane is a viable energy source that is already in use. Currently most of the methane used comes from fossil sources, but it doesn't need to be that way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogas
Cities could take industrial, commercial, and home wastes like hard to recycle papers and food scraps and route them to a biodigester plant that composts the wastes for methane and burns that to generate electricity, or refine it, to send into the local natural gas lines, or compress it for vehicle fuel. Why doesn't every municipal sewer treatment plant have a biodigester facility on site to process the solid wastes and capture the methane for energy to run the plant?
Electric cars take toxic rare earth minerals to work, but you can convert your current car to methane which makes a lot more sense then taking the whole US auto and truck fleet and replacing it with electric vehicles. The main problems with methane cars is where to fuel them and EPA restrictions, both of which are simple to sort out, my local public transit system uses methane powered buses. As the conversions get more common it will get cheaper.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/how-to/a7487/should-you-convert-your-car-to-natural-gas/
Biogas should be one of the go to technologies for dealing with wastes, and creating sustainable energy independence. There is already infrastructure in place to handle moving refined Biogas with existing natural gas lines. Biogas is pretty good and workable as it is, and could be even better with continuing development and investment.
Another energy source that is overlooked is a Trompe, this is a proven technology that is water powered and emissions free. Currently it's mostly used in the mining industry, and not used enough there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trompe
"Over-population, our Lords and Masters say, is another cause of our misery. They mean by this, that the resources of the country are inadequate to its population. We must prove the contrary, and during a holiday take a census of the people, and a measurement of the land, and see upon calculation, whether it be not an unequal distribution, and a bad management of the land, that make our Lords and Masters say, that there are too many of us." - William Benbow, 1832.
John Boyd Orr, former director of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, was candid in stating: ‘a world of peace and friendship, a world with the plenty which modern science had made possible was a great ideal. But those in power had no patience with such an ideal. They said it was not practical politics’ (Daily Herald, 29 July 1948).
'Hunger is caused by poverty and inequality, not scarcity. For the past two decades, the rate of global food production has increased faster than the rate of global population growth' (Eric Holt-Gimenez, Executive Director of Food First, huffpost.com, 5/02/2012).
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