The Titanic still would have hit that iceberg if it was solar powered.
Do most people see renewables as a silver bullet? I think they do, and that is a problem.
You know, most of the problems we face with the biodiversity crash have nothing to do with fossil fuels. With renewables we are just swapping the engine but continue the mining, manufacturing, polution, habitat loss, deforestation, pesticides, overfishing, overhunting. What of these are we proposing to cease? Nobody really talks about this. Shouldnât that be the aim? The mindset seems to be that once we are 100% renewable we can keep doing those things. At this point it seems to me that we are just striving to keep modernity fully powered. Renewables are just one more thing we do with the fires that we make.
It is what you do with the energy, not the form of energy.
Those are also legit problems. We honestly have to deal with ALL of these. But plastic pollution doesnât make climate change any less urgent to deal with, which doesnât make deforestation any less of an issue, etc etc etc.
Itâs important to keep perspective. One of the favourite strategies of bad actors in the environmental space is to point at an environmental issue other than the one theyâre causing, and claiming that THIS is the real issue and we should be talking about that.
Only caught the tail end of a radio report but appears thereâs legislation being slated to allow households to use their evâs as batteries. Had no idea that wasnât allowed. Not sure itâs even a much in demand thing but canât be bad. At the very least a decent on site genny in emergencies or a man cave provider. Redundant perhaps but interesting.
I guess whatâs true is that most of those problems, today, have nothing to do with fossil fuels. However, if projections are correct, we will hit a point within decades where climate change may cause a greater decrease in biodiversity than all the current causes put together. Unless we start taking extraordinary action now. Which is the reason there is so much fuss about it.
Interestingly enough, when you mention overfishing, I believe that much of our current aquaculture supply is worse for environment, as well as our health, than wild caught fishing. Particularly where fish are raised in pens in the ocean. Like many big industries, there is a lot of money in aquaculture, and they lobby governments to gain advantage where they can. And most people think theyâre being âgreenâ by eating fish that arenât wild caught. As well as many areas you outlined, we need to do better in this area as well. Especially as fish high in Omega 3 oils, like salmon, are in higher and higher demand for health reasons, and due to increases in demand for protein in general from both China and India, as many people exit poverty.
I remember listening to a Ted Talk some years ago, by a large research firm, who spent some time quantifying the effects of different actions we could take to reduce climate change. They came up with the top 100 actions we could take, in order of their effect on climate change.
The number one way to reduce climate change?
Education of women, and access to family planning.
That is, reduction/reversal of population growth. Which happens on its own when women have access to education and family planning.
Somewhat related to that, I also heard some research more recently, that when women in family units are more highly educated, not only do they live longer, but their husbands gain 2-3 times as many additional years as their wives. This works at all levels of education. The more highly women are educated, the longer everyone around them lives.
I wonder if the Taliban men realise the impact of denying education to women actually reduces their own lifespan more than it does those they repress?
On the other hand, the Taliban has had success in reducing opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. In the longer term this may lead to less drug addiction in the population.
Thereâs some logic that the Taliban are going to fail with. Women cannot see male doctors. Women cannot go to school. Therefore women cannot become doctors. Therefore women canât get medical care, which will cause major issues in so many tragic ways that will eventually impact the men.
There probably wouldnât be a lot of man made climate change if everyone lived like the taliban though or if somewhere thats highly educated with a declining birth rate is actually âgreenerâ.
Educating anyone is a virtue unto itself, Im not sure though it needs to be tied to climate change. Thats a long bow to draw.
If anything the highly educated lot in say Silicon Valley keep inventing ways to further destroy the environment.
Since I think Al Gores watermark talk. Our planet is incredibly worse off environmentally due to the invention of, at the top of my head.
The smart mobile phone,
Flat screen TVs,
Crypto Currency,
The movement of millions if not billions of people into the middle class in China etc
Human progress, social and technological has had and continues to have terrible environmental consequences - its been an unfortunate side effect of life. Developed, educated countries have been bad for the worlds environment not good.
I think only really solving the fossil fuel generated emissions rapidly will buy mankind a bit more time.
But im totally expecting conditions on earth to be so much worse in the next 40 years than the last.
Heck look at us here in Oz, for a couple of generations we havent been able to go out in the sun for more than 15 min in summer save getting burnt to a crisp.
And thats today.
I think its a moot point for today and todays kids - i think i read somewhere the environmental damage is already baked in. Its more for future generations if its at all decent.
So few foreign governments have any contact with the Taliban government, hence there is no structure for dialogue/cooperation on the rights of females.
As the Taliban doesnât have the status of a government recognised as representative for UN purposes, it escapes the pressure of adherence to the UN rule of law.
The UN institution , acting separately from UN member States, has taken a pragmatic approach, regular meetings and visits to Afghanistan. This has led to the Taliban allowing for some female health workers in the humanitarian aid sector coming under the UN umbrella, denied to other NGOs .
It needs international subsidisation of its health sector. The threat of a complete UN withdrawal if females were banned led to a softening of the blanket ban on females in humanitarian work. Of course that didnât transfer from health to education, but itâs better than nothing. It also provides some exposure of female Afghanistans to educated women from other countries
Itâs also of some note that the Taliban, which is usually uninterested in promoting its international image , has gone public on the rules of women talking to each other or the sound level . It has clarified that the ban on talking or even whispering, is limited to religious services, sign language permitted.
