Global Warming
Every day I just shake my head. I’m glad I don’t have kids. What a mess we are leaving them!
I am simply staggered that the governments of the world are not taking the future of the planet seriously. The air we breathe, the water we drink, and even the soil we stand on are being poisoned with gay abandon. Would you refuse a sick child an expensive drug to save her life? Why is it too expensive to save the planet we live on?
The tough decisions need to be made, and NOW.
15th February, 2009. The president of the Maldives says the Indian Ocean nation will become the world’s first carbon-neutral country within a decade.
Nasheed said his country would renounce oil and get all its energy from renewable sources such as wind and solar power.
“Going green might cost a lot but refusing to act now will cost us the Earth,” he wrote.
Nasheed accused politicians around the world of failing to act and striking “a grotesque Faustian pact” by sacrificing the environment’s future for fossil-fuel consumption today.
“Today, the Maldives will opt out of that pact,” Nasheed wrote.
This tiny country of Maldives consists of about 1200 islands, and about 1/3 of the 300,000 population live in the capital, Male. Almost 100% of their income is derived from tourism. OK, they have even more urgent motives than any other country, but even though they plan to throw everything they have into doing what they can, it will make little difference.
If they can do it, why can’t we?? Yes, it cost a lot of money. You may not have noticed this, but the climate is going crazy. There are records being broken all over the place for the hottest, the coldest, the longest, the wettest, the driest etc.. This is not something that can be debated, prioritised, politicised, or hidden from. WE NEED TO ACT NOW.
The auto manufacturers of the world are dying. The governments of the world are throwing obscene amounts of money at these companies to try and save them. Let most of them burn, I say.
The quality companies, which were well run, productive, and far sighted, will survive. Then, using the money which the governments are throwing at the other inefficient or badly run companies, aquire government shares in each of the quality surviving companies instead, so that you have a few very cashed up well run companies. Then force them to design personal transport which doesnt harm the environment.. immediately. Ban further production of all vehicles which dont meet stringent requirements, and I do mean stringent. I am thinking banning further production of cars that get less than 100mpg would be a good start. Then make the price of oil so high that moving entirely away from oil becomes a fast and natural progression.
Efficient cars, petrol, hybrid and fully electric, can be produced with current technology. They arent, because they cant sell enough of them to make them profitable. Wake up world! You no longer have a choice! Make them the only alternative and they will sell just fine.
Cars as we know them are an extreme and unaffordable luxury now. To have a 500hp, 2 seat car capable of 200mph in a world where the speed limit is rarely higher than 60mph is just stupid. It has to stop, now. To have a car capable of carrying 5 people at 120mph is just as stupid. Almost any economy car can achieve that now, but nowhere can they legally use the speed.
And when that car only transports one person 8 miles on a return trip to work and back daily, how can that be justified?
Yes, there will be job losses. More will be lost too, when the companies supplying the old metal behemoths slowly fold. Some of the losses could be absorbed by the expanding remaining companies. Some will be taken up by the new industries created with a whole new breed of materials, design and technology, but in the short term there would certainly be a negative impact on jobs.
The world will adapt. It needs to. It sounds like a bleak future, but I am optimistic. Humanity has always risen to a challenge, and we face the biggest of them all now. The world needs to act, NOW, and devote everything we have to saving the planet.
The flurry of technology, new production and manufacturing techniques, new materials, etc may even cause a new level of prosperity in the future, who knows? What we DO know is that if we don’t act now, there isn’t going to be any future at all.
The auto industry is just one part of the problem, an example. We need to do much, much, more than that.
We need to convert the entire world to clean and renewable energy, and we need to act immediately. Never mind reducing emissions 15% in the next 10 years, or whatever numbers the spin doctors throw at us. We need to aim at 100% in 5 years, and be scared of every day over target we go. Don’t say I am not being realistic.. don’t you get it? WE HAVE NO CHOICE!!!
We need to stop poisoning our water and air. We need to stop thinking of the banking system, and whether or not we can afford to buy or rent a house or new car, and start thinking of what kind of air our children will breathe, and if they will be able to venture outside in the changed weather. Instead of designing 800m high skyscrapers, we should be designing energy and construction efficient buildings.
We need to change the way we think and live, and we need to do it NOW.