Ways to reduce carbon emissions
1. Stabilise population growth. At present the world is heading towards 9 billion people in 2050, from 6 billion now. This enormous growth is almost unimaginable in its effects.
2. Prevent waste. There is no need to produce so much at so much cost.
3. This means changing our values from 'as much as possible' to 'as much as is needed'.
1. Big drivers of population growth are the desire for mass markets and cheap, willing labor. i.e. economic growth as Quantity not Quality. These big commercial drivers prevent facing the real problems of population and production and put up quibbles about solvable issues such as ageing populations. Otherwise the other drivers of population growth could be coped with - religious and political outbreeding and the insecurity of the poor.
2. Preventing waste. In Western countries at least half of our carbon emissions come from wasteful production. Capitalism needs to be rejigged so that it is economic to produce goods that are needed, in durable forms that can be updated, repaired and renovated, and finally re-used if possible, re-cycled if not.
In a world like this, there would be plenty of jobs at every level. The enterprise that is a feature of capitalism can work out how to pay for the jobs.
3. Imagining carbon emissions. Thee are a part of our whole present way of life, and Waste in general.
How can people use their
imagination to realise this?
a. Look at your local shopping centre. How much of what is in the shops will be wasted and never used? Because it is bought and a. never used, and thrown out - within a day or a week or six months or a year, or b. does not last, because of planned obsolescence, and so must be added to waste. or c. people get 'bored with it' and throw it out to get new. Or wasted because it is not bought, and so must be thrown out.
b. Imagine inventions that reduce waste. Products labelled for durability. A building industry that does not rely on waste - destroying good homes to build more crowded homes - a double whammy of waste, as hardly anything of the good homes is salvaged, and as the new buildings go up, on the building site rises a pile of waste often almost a big a the new erections. Where are the salvage boys and girls with initiative, so that nothing is wasted?
Imagine re-using instead of re-cycling, cutting out the great carbon emissions involved as paper, glass, metals are destroyed before they can be used again as something else.
Yesterday I had to buy a new vacuum cleaner. The old motor could not be reconditioned - and all its perfectly good components, not just its failed motor, can only go to the tip. The old lasted twenty years. The new may hardly last five.
Carbon trading makes profits for some people, without reducing overall emissions.
How can preventing emissions become more profitable for everybody? The answers are clear; but human energy is weak, to do anything about them.
Much could be done with solar, for example, Bob Carpenter's solar desalinator, at http://soldemer.etailcentral.com.au
Link - David Foskey's Home Energy Analysis system to record your electricity, gas and water
bills. A range of graphs then shows cost, consumption and CO2 emissions by week, month or year. Your energy use can be graphed against local
climate factors.
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