Tempting Shortcuts
Working notes on the slower path

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Some notes on climate change and sustainability

Quite often the debate is couched in terms of the question ‘is there actually a rise in global temperatures and are humans causing it?’

But I don’t think this is the best question to be asking.

A better set of questions are:

  • ‘Is our current activity (globally) sustainable (in terms of materials and particularly energy)?’
  • ‘If everyone on the planet lived as I or you do, what impact would that have on material and energy demands?’
  • More critically, ‘who is denying the effect of climate change and what do they gain by doing so?’ and the corresponding ‘who is affirming climate change and what might they gain from the shifts advocated?’
  • how are we using our land? Is this sustainable over the long-term?

burning fossil fuels

energy

land use and degradation

Our land use can be a double whammy - losing vegetation that captures carbon and replacing it with carbon producing livestock and utilising chemicals that rely on fossil fuels.

Actions

  • purchase offsets via CarbonFund
  • download rather than stream all media; purchase rather than stream

Notes

The issue of reducing food and child production is not it - it is a distribution of the current assets that is the issue.

  • https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/magazine/our-climate-future-is-actually-our-climate-present.html?emc=edit_mbae_20170419&nl=&nlid=69654270&te=1
  • https://www.nytimes.com/section/magazine?emc=edit_mbae_20170419&nl=&nlid=69654270&te=1
  • Flying is a major contributor

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