CLIMATE CHANGE: what does it mean?

The Straight Goods

Cynicism creeps up with old age just like previously unknown allergies and arthritic pain. I tend to view the world a little differently now than I did even twenty years ago. I have learned to take everything I read or hear with a grain, or even two, of salt. Everything that's fed to us these days is sugar coated, including the news.

Interestingly, even ordinary table salt is sugar coated. That's right. Like every thing else we buy at the grocery store, it has sugar in it. Why? Because someone has determined that humans love sugar and we're going to get it in everything we eat, including salt.

Sugarcoating has also become the modus operandi of governments, their agencies, and certainly big business. Their belief must be that we aren't capable of handling the truth, so they must distort it, or simply lie to us. It's so much more evident now!

The climate treaty is either a major distortion of the truth, or an outright lie. If one believes the climate-change models, as most governments do, the world cannot keep growing at the rate of 3% per year and limit global temperatures to 1.5C above the pre-industrial era. It just isn't possible! But 1.5C is the treaty's main goal!

Even at this rate of growth, considered to be anaemic by economists, in twenty-five years global GDP would double. That is, by 2040, the midpoint of the range (2030-2050) when the 1.5C objective should be achieved, the world will be consuming twice as much as we do now. If we have any chance of achieving the Climate Treaty objective, we have to start reducing consumption: not increasing it!

Even if we held per capita consumption at today's level, world GDP would increase in excess of 1% per year just by population growth – another of our serious problems. India's population is increasing at 2% per year and is slated to become the most populous country in the world in less than five years! Until recently, global population was growing in excess of 1.5% per year. So, achieving the 1% growth rate means a reduction of half a percent, which is significant. That half a percentage point would make a big difference in 25 years time.

In 1950, when I was just a toddler, the world's population was about two and a half billion; by 1960, it had increased to just over 3 billion. Over the next forty years it doubled, and by 2010 the world had close to seven billion people, adding the last billion in only ten years – an increase of 17%, or 1.7%/a.

Population growth is a serious problem, but not for the corporate world! It thrives on increased consumption, and nothing increases it like more people: more mouths to feed and bodies to clothe, not to mention cell phones and other high-tech gadgets that we can't seem to do without these days. We may even call these new devices progress, but what are we progressing to? Using smart phones to take selfies is compromising peoples' health, but whose even conscious of it? 

Returning to the Climate Treaty, it's clear that it's either filled with good intentions or outright lies. But why would they lie to us? I don't know the answer. Could it be that they are so used to lying? Politicians always promise us what we want and hope for, but they never deliver the straight goods. They are good at selling illusions, and I fear that this treaty is another one.

Why am I so cynical, or even pessimistic?

As already noted, even if the global economy grows 3%/year, the low end of current forecasts, consumption will double in less than 25 years. Experts are predicting that by 2040 coal consumption will increase by 30%, oil by 20, and natural gas by 100.

Renewable energy will increase manyfold, but by 2040 it will still account for less than 20% of global energy consumption.

Am I the only one that's not buying the bill of goods?

Before the Paris climate change conference, we were told that we had to significantly reduce emissions, from current levels, to have a fighting chance at meeting the objective. Not only are we not reducing emissions, we will be increasing them significantly over the next 25 years.

I'm not so concerned about burning more natural gas because it is a relatively clean fuel, but increasing coal burning, rather than decreasing it, concerns me a lot because it will add to air pollution and exacerbate health problems. Many allergies that are showing up in the population were not there fifty years ago. They are the direct result of the toxic soup that we breathe, drink, and eat daily. We need to put a stop to it. We need to reduce coal and oil burning, not increase it.

One might point out that although we will burn more fossil fuels, we can still meet the treaty objective by greenhouse-gas capture.

Touché! We've come to the crux of the matter. 

The treaty is about promoting new technologies for removing CO2 and other greenhouse gases, not about cleaning up the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the contaminated food we eat. Keep consuming fossil fuels! We will remove the CO2, which is harmless to us in concentrations of parts per million! Forget about the toxic and carcinogenic substances released from burning coal and oil that are already causing us suffering and death! Don't worry about increased morbidity and mortality as long as we keep consuming, and ringing up the profits for the multinational corporations!

The corporations are the big winners. They win in two ways: firstly, consumption will continue to grow; and secondly, developing and selling new technology will increase profit margins, and bonuses!

People are the big losers. We lose in two ways: firstly, human health will continue to deteriorate, adding additional pressure on already strained healthcare systems around the world; and secondly, taxpayers' money will be used to develop new technologies, which may be successful in achieving the treaty goal, but most likely not. In any case the government handouts will be enormous.

By not forcing actual reductions in fossil fuel consumption, specifically coal because it's the dirtiest and most hazardous, governments, and the large corporations that control them, have missed an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: reducing air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, both are going to rise, in the hope that new technologies will mitigate the latter. They have traded the solution to an immediate health problem, for a potential solution to a potential long-term one.

Please tell me, is my scepticism and cynicism justified?