MenoOwAc; Are We Concerned...Enough???

This is the time of year when I generally do some conscience-pricking, insight-raising posts in regard to the ecology and the environment. In fact, I'm a little overdue.

Some of you will have been aware that the World Economic Forum, Davos 2020, has been and gone. That place where billionaires rub shoulders and egos and show off their shiny plans for their various administrations for the year ahead. It was notable for a few prominent speeches and 'debates'. I watched quite a few items via the YouTube channel. I was particularly taken with the opening words from Greta and the followup discussion in regard to averting 'climate apocalypse', which you can watch HERE. (The good stuff starts at minute six.) I encourage you to watch this through and to peruse and view a few others from the channel.

Climate change was not the only topic, but it would be fair to say that it dominated somewhat. As it rightly should. Bottom line is, we - as a species and definitely as individual countries - are just not moving fast enough in the direction of true environmental care. It requires a cultural change that eludes the vast majority.

Let's face it, even the most aware and caring of us find it a challenge to be completely plastic-free, or to consider how far our fruit and veg may have travelled and by what transport. The clothes we buy will almost certainly have travelled further than the borders of our terrain - and will quite possibly have been made in conditions that, by Western standards, are less than humane.

The thing is, the genie is out the bottle. To turn the world back to the time before the industrial revolution (which is what really needs to happen if we are to truly make the changes required for the climate and the sea and the land) is simply not a goer. As a race, I think that we are still not sufficiently concerned to make the efforts required for real change to take effect in a short enough space of time for stoppage or reversal of climate damage. All these figures of 1.5% and 2% and putting 'caps' on emissions and setting dates such as 2035 or 2050... are not enough. Big business (read petro-chemical, all kinds of manufacture) versus consumer demand will always result in loopholes. (Actually, business/economics has a great deal to do with why things are more static than they need to be... and Richard Murphy writes quite a bit on this point.)

Then there is the consideration that it's not all about carbon dioxide. There are other gaseous elements that contribute to global warming. Not least of these is HFC-23. The gas from our refrigerators and air conditioners. It was the one, you may recall, which replaced earlier propellants in aerosol cans such as hairspray and deodorant... the big answer to preventing holes in the ozone layer of the atmosphere. Now, scientists say one tonne of HFC-23 emissions is equivalent to the release of more than 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. And its use is on the increase. 

Well, there's the catch-22, eh? Increasingly warm climate, just switch on the air-con...

Not here in the Bonny Land, of course. Heating is more our thing. Oh yes, that inconvenient fact that delivery of power utilities to our homes means the burning of coal, natural gas, and oil for electricity and heat is the largest single source of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The mind boggles at the complexity of the environmental hole we have dug ourselves...