The Monday Mix (19/07/2021)
Hi Friends,
I want to focus on environmental issues this week. After the recent heatwaves in North America and the severe flooding in Germany, it’s clear climate change is happening now and this is only the beginning.
The temptation is to think this is what climate change is going to look like. Heatwaves, heavy rain and so on. While this is true, things could, and probably will, get much worse.
We’re only seeing the start of the effects of pumping millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere over hundreds of years. Unless we slow down and start to reverse course, we could doom our offspring and their offspring to a terrible future.
It’s a distinct possibility but it’s one we have the power to change, even at this late stage.
The Climate Left
A thought-provoking by Noah Smith on how the Climate Left is a farce, but a useful farce. You may be familiar with groups such as Extinction Rebellion, which have held numerous protests in recent years. Activists have stopped newspapers from printing, smashed the windows of banks and halted traffic in London.
While these protests don’t achieve much in themselves, they do achieve something. They bring the issue of climate into the mainstream. Extinction Rebellion are heavy-handed in their methods and some of their goals are contradictory, but they have succeeded in spreading the message on the importance of tackling climate change.
China’s Emissions
This is a striking graph and one that makes for uncomfortable reading. While it’s good news that the US and Europe are reducing their emissions, even if they are coming down slowly, this is offset by the huge rise in emissions from China.
The upward trend since 1950 is remarkable. For all the effort the western world is doing to reduce emissions, without China doing the same, it could amount to a drop in the ocean.
This is the elephant in the room.
Unless the whole world reduces emissions, we’re going to make very little progress. This is a graph the leaders of the western world should be doing their best to rectify in the coming years.
Big Oil Lobbying
The other conundrum leaders have to solve is Big Oil. For all their rhetoric about reducing emissions and their dependency on oil, behind the scenes, it doesn't seem like much is changing.
The above report details how companies such as Shell and ExxonMobil might talk a good game, but they are still donating to trade organisations such as the American Petroleum Institute which lobbies on behalf of these companies.
Unless these companies move away from oil and into renewables, our prospects for slowing temperature rises and even reversing the effects of climate change are slim.
In the pursuit of profit, they may just endanger the ability of millions, if not billions of people to live comfortable lives in the remainder of this decade.
Money is useless if the planet you live on is uninhabitable.
Book I’m reading: Permanent Record - Edward Snowden’s autobiography is a fascinating and enlightening look into his life and his subsequent whistleblowing. He’s a brilliant writer and I found myself turning the pages with ease. He may just be one of the most important figures of the 21st century and his book is well worth reading.
Quote I’m pondering - “The Earth is what we all have in common” - Wendell Berry
That’s all for this week, until next time,
Tom.