Will We Meet the Climate Goals We Set in Paris?
Redhead girl, Eiffel tower background
There are 28.2 million Google hits on this subject, so it’s not like no one is asking this question.
The truth is this: It’s a function of the decisions that you and I make along the way.
Passivity and business as usual will enable the oil companies to keep us in fossil fuels until the planet bakes.
Actively voting with our wallets will turn things around quickly. Here, I mean divesting from dirty energy, installing solar, using it to power our cars, driving fuel-efficient vehicles, minimizing driving and air travel, electing environmentally progressive politicians, and cutting back on red meat.
What happens when the demand for gas and beef dries up? We get something else, and that something here is clean energy and food with a far lower carbon footprint.
It’s not up to them. It’s up to us.
Craig,
Like many earnest enthusiastic devotees of fads, you have become convinced in your righteousness, you have a duty and obligation to inflict new found philosophical fad on others by means of a ‘Crusade”.
The assumption that everyone else wishes to join your ill-conceived and illogical ideology is what motivates you to assume that the only reason the general public resists is due to some malevolent or evil conspiracy they are to weak or immoral to resist.
This arrogance and delusion is the hallmark of all crusading advocates and finger wagging preachers.
(But, I really like the picture “Redhead girl, Eiffel tower background” 🙂 )
I agree with you and this is what I have been doing. Waiting for the government or something else is a waste and I have said this all along. We must all take matters into our own hands and live what we believe.
I strive to be the crappiest consumer I can possibly be. I use things until they are totally worn out and even then I use whatever I can salvage for other things. I recycle as much as I can. I even recycle energy. My car even runs on recycled used vegetable oil.
I am on the mailing lists of several groups that advocate for clean energy. They are constantly looking to advocate to our elected representatives for policy changes. I believe this to be a waste of resources. I have taken to emailing them and suggesting they create a way on their websites for their membership to find more efficient products and ways to take advantage of clean energy. Essentially to live what they advocate for. After all, the opponents they are opposing get most of their money from fossil fuels. By not reducing their own usage they are essentially continuing to contribute dollars and therefore resources to their opponents. Basically they are funding their enemies in the same fashion as our country funds our enemies in the middle east.
If you want something done you have to do it yourself.
Brian,
I’m sure you mean well, and congratulations on driving a bio-fuel diesel car.
So, please don’t take what I’m about to suggest as attempting to dissuade you from pursuing a more environmental lifestyle. I applaud your desire for your own lifestyle choices to be an example to others of the benefits of your beliefs. Well done!
My concern with your minimalist approach to life, is not intended to be any kind of moral judgement but more of an examination of the effectiveness of your efforts.
I guess like any hobby, interest,philosophy/ideology/religion etc, after a while, especially when reinforced by belonging to organized groups, there’s always the danger of becoming a little narrow minded, and lacking in perspective and objectivity.
As I see it, there are two basic approaches to improving the environment.
1) Reduce human activity. Reduce consumerism, reduce economic activity, reduce innovation, wealth creation, increase taxes, especially on energy,burden citizens with increasing regulatory regimes aimed at enforcing conforming to a rigid ideological agenda.
2) Recognize and work to eliminate environmentally negative aspects through the development (and adoption)) of innovative new “clean(er)” technology. Incentivizing R&D for practical new recycling technology and cleaning up old pollution.
Encouraging positive aspects of energy industries such as coal and oil while deploying clean(er) technology to reduce and eliminate the negative. Increasing economic activity to create wealth. Removing all unnecessary or overly burdensome regulations (especially those which serve only ideological purpose).
Encourage the introduction of innovative new technology and consumer goods. Reward innovators by buying and adopting their products.
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Brian, I can understand your pride in being a “crappy consumer, and using things until they are totally worn out”.
However, I would invite you to consider the effectiveness of such an approach ? When driving your old vehicle until it’s completely worn out, you are discouraging the introduction of new technology.
A twenty year old vehicle is far less safe, both for you and your fellow motorists. EV manufacturers need your consumer support if their products are to reach economically viable scale.
The development of fracking technology has seen a dramatic decrease in US emissions. I need environmentalists like yourself, to purchase Electric lawn and horticultural equipment.
We need scale to introduce almost all safer, improved more environmental technology.
Most importantly, we need consumer excitement to generate economic activity, which in turn, creates demand for innovative new products. It’s this economic activity which is the engine creating the surplus wealth that allows investment for R&D and commercialization of “clean(er)” technology.
Capitalist economic expansion produces Tesla, and Smart Clean tech. Cocialist economic constrictions, produces Venezuela or the “Trabant” so beloved of the old GDR.
Yes, consumerism has negative aspects. Do we really need all those many versions of the same thing? I’m afraid the answer is yes!
Each product is an expression of the creative genius of the designer. Consumers express their aspirations and individualism when purchasing. It’s that infinite variety and flowering of creativity that promotes individualism, and social freedom of expression.
We are both environmentalists, but where Craig advocates a cruel, impractical, nihilistic/ideological approach to say, coal fueled energy for instance.
Craig demands all Coal energy be “kept in the ground” for fear of harmful emissions.
in contrast, I advocate following the advice of the World Bank Chairman and alleviate third world poverty by investing in radical new “clean(er) coal technology that keeps and uses the energy from coal, while recycling harmful emissions to create new by-products capable achieving further reductions in other pollutant industries.
Same goal, just different approaches and outcomes.
(Now. can I sell (or lease) you an electric ride on mower with it’s own solar power and storage ? 🙂 )
Wow I wish I had the time to respond properly to all of that.
I am sure I fall somewhere in between 1 and 2.
The bottom line for me is I do not have copious funds to purchase the latest tech on a whim. As I tell all of those forward thinking organizations asking me for donations so they can continue to advocate for cleaner energy, “I do no have money, only brains”. So I use those brains to do the things I can do. I can convert a car to run on used vegetable oil. I can make and program an Arduino and the needed peripheral circuitry to control my PV system so I don’t have to wait for the charge controller companies to do it as they seem totally disinterested in this even though they are the ones who know the state of almost everything in a system. I can venture into less used technologies and make an accurate evaluation about whether they are worth using or not. One example is the nickel/iron batteries I use. This old technology originally produced by Edison is capable of absorbing and dispensing energy the way mother nature gifts it to us and doesn’t care about temperature conditions. It is profoundly robust. My Arduino low voltage disconnect and dump load controller insures that the charge controller never goes into absorb or float modes to protect the batteries and is instead keeping the panels producing at max capacity by sending excess power into the house to power all my appliances and so forth instead of using grid power. I can make solar air heaters and now my latest project is a liquid based solar heating system so I can have storage capacity eventually to use at night. And of course drain water heat exchangers which I am a big advocate for along with the other waste heat recovery exchangers produced by this company.
At some point I will get an electric car but for the moment I can only do this. My wife’s car is 8 years old and gets 32 miles to the gallon but except for trips to the doctors she only drives 5.2 miles a week to work and back twice. She will retire in a few months and I will have to make an effort to take her car to work a couple of times a month so it gets a good run. My car is 18 years old but posses more bells and whistles than I want and I spend more time fixing the sensing and warning equipment than the devices it is supposed to be warning me about.
Sadly no one is interested in hearing from my brains and I do not totally agree with the advocacy. Trying to persuade the government or industry to do the right thing seems somewhat inefficient to me. Taking that money and using it to decrease the amount of energy you need or to get that energy from cleaner sources seems to me to be far more effective in forcing industry and government to move in the correct direction. I feel these organizations should be helping their members to be doing that. Basically vote with their dollars.
Most families need 2 cars. In my opinion one should be a plug in hybrid and the other a full electric so they have one long distance vehicle for travel but it wouldn’t need fuel for daily use. However, the electrics should be charged at work during the day so reversing the cycle generally adhered to by using all the solar power that is generated during the day that the power companies complain about making the cycle, charge at work, drive home, drive to work and charge again. At this time the cycle is charge at night at home where dirty power is needed, go to work and come home and charge again there.
Anyway that is all I have time for at the moment.
As for the lawn mower, no thanks. My next mower will probably be this.
https://www.husqvarna.com/us/products/robotic-lawn-mowers/
Basically a Roomba for the lawn. I won’t have to feed it gas or oil, I don’t have to ride it around for 1.5 hours a week and I can charge it from my solar panels. So quiet it can work at night.
This brand has the best ones I have seen so far.