Climate change and the consumer - news

Which has been dismissed as:

I guess it’s a worldview/values thing.

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Denialists scoff that we’ve always had bushfires but, if the bush burns too frequently and/or too fiercely, it won’t recover.

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Australia put this mob where they are, they have the numbers, and such is life until the next election and possibly beyond. Hazard reduction! Discredited by the experts as being a significant factor, but our stone headed pollies know better.

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I dont think it matters. Climate change is real. The reasons for it are irrelevant. Doing something about it as much as we can, is not. It should not even be a political issue and I dont know why it is. We have to try. I’ve been on about it since 2000 wen I read a book by Bell and Streiber called The coming global superstorm. That was overdone but it made me think… a lot.

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:slightly_smiling_face:
I think that is how I should read this. My added word in bold. 100% agree.

We can all do something. Some of us more than others.
I’ve been part of the mining and related industries for decades. You get to see a lot and learn about those communities.

Now we live quietly on a smaller average, and do revegetation work with support from the Australian Land for Wildlife program, and local council. When it comes to making decisions each is considered in respect of it’s environmental outcome. Each decision is often a compromise.

At the same time we need to live in the community we have chosen for our future. What does that community believe? So long as we respect the often very different views of others I’d agree, it does not matter.

We are all consumers and on day to day have similar expectations.

Changing the direction of the nation is a very different proposition.

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For those who cower at the cost of mitigating global warming (and those who pretend to be concerned, so they can rationalise inaction), a blog post on the one-sided question of costing:

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Another article regarding climate change inaction in Australia.

And another article regarding climate change action in Europe.

Japanese researchers develop recycled concrete which is stronger than the original concrete.

It started becoming political in the 1980s, when business realised the risks to their short-term profits. Our sad chronicle is revealed in ANU research on Australia’s media.

Meanwhile, economists focus on more than the risks to profits:

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I rather like the graph in this one:


Will the path be that straight? If we take Pareto as Gospel, then most of the reduction should happen at the beginning (when there’s “low-hanging fruit” to pick). The curve should then flatten out as further progress gets more difficult. Of course, a politician might set milestones for straight-line progress, then pretend to be surprised when we miss the target.

Worrying developments in the higher latitudes.

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I’ve started a survey to judge Community attitudes to climate change. The more responses, the better.

And NSW government impeding progress away from coal:

Worrying events in the deep South.

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Equinor abandons plans to drill for oil and gas in the Great Australian Bight.

The mayor of Kangaroo Islang is disappointed.

Those bushfires are so yeaterday.

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Infrastructure Australia makes recommendations to government for expenditure as well as prioritising investment decisions.

Preceding the recent rain events.

Infrastructure Australia listed both town and city water security and a national water strategy as high priority initiatives, citing possible “severe urban water shortages or restrictions” and regional towns reliant on a single supply source as causes for concern.

Possible solutions include investment in desalination to service rural and regional communities where drawing down on environmental resources is no longer reliable. It’s considered cheaper and more sustainable than trucking water in which has become the norm for many communities. Our capital cities have the support of government investment desalination, why not our consumers in rural and regional communities?

http://www.awa.asn.au/AWA_MBRR/Publications/Fact_Sheets/Desalination_Fact_Sheet.aspx

Plenty more to consider.

Has Australia’s challenge to reduce it’s carbon emissions just got that much more difficult?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-21/australia-wildfires-cause-greenhouse-gas-emissions-to-double

The real economic value of our natural environment is under valued. It does depend a little on the land type.

I’ve seen figures as low as $1,000/ha suggested for Channel Country. The NSW Govt has this report relating to natural forest more closely aligned with the types of vegetation and ecosystems affected in the recent fires.


https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=f4542f50-879b-4c29-b33c-0ec7f5641038&subId=206932

I’ll leave the number crunching and assumptions for others to contemplate with more than 20million hectares burnt out this summer.

How much should the community be putting back in cash to ensure our severely damaged natural assets are fully restored?

The great splash of cash for the communities affected has very little put aside for the environment. Not that the communities affected don’t need all the help they can get. Perhaps putting a few extra billions of dollars back into their environment over the next 5 years might also help with their employment and commercial prospects. It would help all of us for lots of other reasons too.

P.S.
I know what the Govt knows. Green House Gas emissions from natural events don’t count, apparently?
The ABC “Mad as Hell’s” Shaun Micallef pointed this out on Wednesday 26th. He also suggested why that might be a difficult position for any Govt with no sense of humour.

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With climate change reducing river flows, how much water can be safely extracted?


More on climate change issues facing my home region:

The graph of climate-related “loss events” in this article shows an interesting rise over time.

What some companies are doing to reduce their impact:

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The longer we delay, the more expensive it gets:

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An article regarding ridesharing services like Uber actually creating significantly more emissions tahn private transport.

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Depressing thought: what is the consumer impact of the inevitable decline of our planet? The knowledge that the best we can hope for is to reduce how bad things will get.

I’d never heard of doomism before. It sounds like its straight out of the Lomborg playbook.

Elsewhere, I wrote:

Some doggedly refuse to consider anything but the here and now. They act as if there is no future. Sadly, they may be right. Still, I live in hope.

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The decline of our planet will result in no consumers - most seem to agree that if nothing unforseen happens in the meantime, the planet will be ‘toast’ - literally - and there is nothing we can do to save it. Humans (consumers) will have left the scene a long time before that … also inevitable …

Notwithstanding the quality of the minds that proposed it, the so-called “Venus scenario” is by all accounts highly unlikely. The planet isn’t likely to be ‘toast’ - at least, not on a timescale this side of the cosmological. On that count, you can rest easy.

The decline that forms the subject of the article is the one that forms the title of this topic. Climate change due to anthropogenic global warming. On that, there is much that we can and should do.

Should we be so shortsighted?

It is oft said that because ‘we can’, then ‘we should’ … it’s not clear if you are arbitrarily linking these two concepts, but in my experience they are not always friends :wink: