Climate Change

[Paul Arden]

It sounds fair to me.

[t.z.]

It sounds fair to me.

the sound of it seems sweet, but I doubt that it is handled in the manner it is meant. So far most of the money going from industrialised countries a.k.a. - "the west" to the so called third world has been bound to pretty dubious projects and uses. I am afraid, if not even sure that it is the case in this scenario as well.

On top, I do believe that it is perceived as yet another form of imperialism. The rich telling the third world what to do ...

[Graeme H]

What's your solution t.z.? (I got nothin' better myself, but I'm interested to find out how other people would tackle it.)

Cheers,
Graeme

[t.z.]

What's your solution t.z.? (I got nothin' better myself, but I'm interested to find out how other people would tackle it.)

Cheers,
Graeme

We, the people have to change ... seems pretty impossible I know. But the only person one can change is oneself. Telling others what the "HAVE" to do does not work. It tends to end up in violence.

Me for my part I try to minimise my footprint by not eating meat, drive as little as possible, buy local stuff and so on. I know, seems hideous but calms my bad conciseness and helps me sleep at night.

I am afraid that third world help is made to wash money into back into the pockets of the industries where the money originally came from. I assume this is the same with this money against "carbon footprint" - I would suggest to read the works of Jean Ziegler. I had to stop reading it as I got unbearably angry and frustrated about "the system"

[Graeme H]

What's your solution t.z.? (I got nothin' better myself, but I'm interested to find out how other people would tackle it.)

Cheers,
Graeme

We, the people have to change ... seems pretty impossible I know. But the only person one can change is oneself. Telling others what the "HAVE" to do does not work. It tends to end up in violence.

Me for my part I try to minimise my footprint by not eating meat, drive as little as possible, buy local stuff and so on. I know, seems hideous but calms my bad conciseness and helps me sleep at night.

I am afraid that third world help is made to wash money into back into the pockets of the industries where the money originally came from. I assume this is the same with this money against "carbon footprint" - I would suggest to read the works of Jean Ziegler. I had to stop reading it as I got unbearably angry and frustrated about "the system"

Fair enough. I agree with all those points. I KNOW I'm not doing enough but I try. (Very hypocritical of me, I know.) I've put 5.4kw of PV on the roof, eat food from my garden and ride my bike when I can to help assuage my own conscience. When I can afford it, I'll buy an electric car and a wall battery, but even that's not enough to offset my carbon footprint. It's just too hard to live in a first world country like Australia AND have a small carbon footprint: our whole infrastructure is designed around using fossil fuels. (That is, living in the suburbs, commuting into an office, buying food produced somewhere other than my garden)

Being a geologist and thinking on timescales of tens of thousands to millions of years, I know the Earth will go on. Nature will run over our society like a speed bump. People will go on (were the most successful species at adapting to or adapting our environment ever) but I believe that within 10,000 years, we'll be living much more sustainably with a global population of less than 100,000,000.

[t.z.]

Being a geologist and thinking on timescales of tens of thousands to millions of years, I know the Earth will go on. Nature will run over our society like a speed bump. People will go on (were the most successful species at adapting to or adapting our environment ever) but I believe that within 10,000 years, we'll be living much more sustainably with a global population of less than 100,000,000.

- that sounds good to me

oh by the way - biofuels help the hunger in the world

[Mangrove Cuckoo]

What to do?

Yes, reducing your footprint as much as possible might be the best thing an individual can do at this point. Expecting our elected officials to help is obviously not realistic, at least not here in the US. Of course, there is always the choice of becoming an activist but that would cut into fishing time.

And while just reducing your footprint may not feel like enough, or possibly foolish or even masochistic, let me suggest another way to feel better about this choice.

Here in Florida the presiding power companies just attempted to secretly promote an insincere “pro solar” amendment that was quite a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Luckily enough people saw through it and with a huge investment of time and money were able to educate the rest of the voters to not fall for it. Essentially, while looking like it was all about letting homeowners install solar panels on their homes, it would have blocked those homeowners from sharing any excess.

So, instead of just reducing my footprint, by charging an electric motor-assisted bicycle with a solar panel, and using it for as much local transportation as I can, I also see it as giving the FU finger to the power company. It feels so much better when I look at it that way!

Another foolish idea I have is to promote flyfishing. Give free lessons to beginners. Take some of them fishing. A few of them will get hooked, love the places fish live, become environmentally aware… and maybe you made some difference?

WTF else can you do?

[t.z.]

Another foolish idea I have is to promote flyfishing. Give free lessons to beginners. Take some of them fishing. A few of them will get hooked, love the places fish live, become environmentally aware… and maybe you made some difference?

WTF else can you do?

That actually is a very good idea ... does it affect the climate? Maybe not very much, but getting people closer to nature certainly helps.

[Walter]

I detest this populist shift to the Far Right. It makes it ok to be a racist, sexist, a bigot, to have your head in the sand, to feel the support of your white "underprivileged" brotherhood.

I suppose that's one way to create an open dialogue between people with differing views. I think one of the largest problems in today's society is the tendency to label the people that don't agree with you as racists, xenophobe, sexists, climate change deniers, etc. Once they are labeled you don't talk to them.

I think what we really need, instead of a registry for Muslims, is a registry for people who don't fly fish. There's something wrong with people who don't fly fish.

[Walter]

What's your solution t.z.? (I got nothin' better myself, but I'm interested to find out how other people would tackle it.)

Cheers,
Graeme

We, the people have to change ... seems pretty impossible I know. But the only person one can change is oneself. Telling others what the "HAVE" to do does not work. It tends to end up in violence.

Me for my part I try to minimise my footprint by not eating meat, drive as little as possible, buy local stuff and so on. I know, seems hideous but calms my bad conciseness and helps me sleep at night.

I am afraid that third world help is made to wash money into back into the pockets of the industries where the money originally came from. I assume this is the same with this money against "carbon footprint" - I would suggest to read the works of Jean Ziegler. I had to stop reading it as I got unbearably angry and frustrated about "the system"

Some of the sanest statements I've heard in a long time on the issue. Reduce (quit buying so much crap), Reuse (stop throwing out so much crap), Recycle (anybody who has watched Paul build a fly rod out of spare bits understands this one).

We are all guilty of excess but that just means there is room to improve. Do we need to jump on the technology fix bandwagon? We can always improve our technologies and we will but I shudder when I hear people talking about getting rid of 3 billion fossil fuel burning vehicles in the next two decades and replacing them with ultra clean electric vehicles because we can all see for ourselves how clean that electric technology is. Schwarzenneger had a great analogy about what would you rather be locked in a room with - an electric car, a fossil fuel car, or a bio fuel car? That sounds great but I would expand the analogy to include the waste products from producing the energy generating elements for each of those vehicles in that room with you. We know that fossil fuel production is bad for the environment but has anybody taken a look at the affects of mining the rare earth elements that are used in the solar cells and batteries we need to run the electric car? Absolutely sickening.

On the other hand alcohol production is something many people do in their own homes...

I really doubt that paying carbon taxes will benefit anybody but the politicians in the long run. It's not like the money goes into a big envelope labeled "carbon taxes - to be distributed to poorer nations". The money will do the same as all taxes - go into general revenues. From there the source of the money will be totally forgotten and politicians will decide how to divvy up the money. Part of that will be to decide how much of a raise they deserve this year for voting against raising minimum wages. Does anybody remember the energy crisis in the 70's and the taxes that were imposed at that time that were supposedly going to be used to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels?