We're on the Precipice of a Runaway Train !
- 11 Dec 06, 10:09 AM
The joke is on me..a trail with me getting my metaphors the wrong way round. Listen to the Now Show, it will make you laugh...a good song. Tune in to last Fridays show - 8th Dec. We've been reading your blogs...
In the last programme we have Tony Juniper (Director, ), Jacquie McGlade (Executive Director, ) and Sanjayan (Lead Scientist, ) talking to us about the future. Many of your blogs relate to the PEuT carbon footprint and how we should offset that. We ask this panal of their views. Juniper thinks the capacity of the world to manage its carbon emissions by market off set initiatives is limited. McGlade says the EEA have put money into ecosystem restoration in Eastern Europe and other countries (natural forests for example). Sanjayan says there is "no silver bullet". He says "all of us have to think about what we eat, our energy consumption and what we wear..." There was a strong call for government legislation from FOE - whilst Jacquie MCGlade of the EEA accepted that governments are the ones for legislation, but ordinary people are the ones who have to take on board the huge ideas embraced in climate change too, and that caring more for one another will have positive effects on our care for the environment. Sanjayan says there is work to do from the conservation community translating the climate change threat in simple and non threatening terms to lay people.
In Programme 6 we look at how the natural cycles of the Earth can inform us of the recent changes, now widely accepted as induced by our own activities. Many of your have been posting comments over the months about whether or not the climate change we are experiencing at the moment is all part of the earths natural processes. This is the programme that has more of a "classic" climate change programme feel about it than the others, the others try to anchor the stories in natural history. In the programme we tell how events in the past have occurred and how our current experience of climate change relates to this. Two big stories come out of this: 250 million years ago there was an extinction event that wiped out 95% of life on earth. Mike Benton of Bristol University tells us that continuous eruptions from volcanoes pumped carbon dioxie into the atmosphere..this warmed the earth in time. Continuous toxic fall out from the volcanoes lead to acid rain and other poisoning events. And it might be that excessive warming relased the dreaded frozen methane on the seabed - the so called clathrate gun - escalting the warming....The runaway train about to fly off the Precipice. For our programme, continuous CO2 emissions from volcanoes, read the human-induced emisions of modern times. Other nasties, read our destruction of habitats and over utilisation of natural resources. The conclusion of the programme is climate change coupled with other people-led activities is the dire problem. The second story, in brief - 600 years ago there was a mini ice age - nothing to do with us. And we tell a story of how this made the Pacific Ocean drop in level by 80cm. This stressed the coral reefs around the islands...And for the frst time in Fiji's history, the people went to war with each other. Food security was shattered because they could no longer depend on the reefs. Bands of people went into the hills and fortified their communities and guarded their crops - the first time they had really grown them. Climate change, how ever caused, changes society. A very clear message.
In the 5th programme (Biodiversity) and the 7th programme (Conservation) we take on board many of your comments and worries about the value of biodiversity, how we have to value it and protect it - And we look at how conservation is trying to include climate change into it's planning. The oceans come out as a very tough place to protect.
Tomorrow I'm off to interview the Archbishop of Canterbury - a world faith leader who has clearly said climate climate change is a moral issue. What does he mean by that? And what can religion bring to the environmental table tackling the causes of climate change? And what should we celebrate about the natural world?
Update:
Radio 4's The Message discussed the issue of the coverage of climate change in the media. You can listen again to the climate change debate.
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PEuT is interesting and educational. You deserve an award for the job you do in attempting to save the Earth.
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See /dna/mbbbc7/F2766774?thread=3738266
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for another one which got by a producer.
Freudian slip?
xx
ed
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The root of all our climate change problems is a simple fact: there are far too many people living on this planet. Despite all the rhetoric from our leaders no one, apart from the Chinese, shows the slightest inclination to tackle this taboo subject. It should not be impossible to devise strategies to manage population reductions in as benign a way as possible. Yes, it will require radical restructuring of economies and powerful incentives to control our most basic urges and expectations. Yet without active measures to reduce human numbers in a civilised way, it is certain that the traditional methods of war pestilence and famine will do it for us and sooner rather than later.
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Thank you Robert
It beggars belief that we are simply shooting the breeze around climate change and not grasping the nettle with respect to climate changers. I've asked Julian on a number of occasions when the 成人快手 are going to start taking this subject seriously, but I'm getting blanked. Guess that's the taboo for you.
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Yes, the causes of climate change are the issue. I think PEuT has made some pretty good inroads into the subject and I appreciate that some of my comments and content of the earlier shows elude to symptoms of climate change. However, give me a bit of a break. I've put up some direct stuff on this blog which relates to my understanding of how we as individuals have to change. Population is the singular and massive issue. Look back to an earlier blog of mine where I link to the 3-planets campaign of WWF. But just stepping aside from figuring out how we limit human population - how do those in the developed world learn to be happier with less. As I have quoted before - ceasing to find the meaning of life out of possessions and ever increasing wealth seems to be making people unhappy. I made reference to the Amish insofar they have a culture of being content with the minimum of possessions. But let me end on a radical thought. What is the driver of people in the west thinking they can have what ever they like? Must be something that is omni-present because we all know this feeling. In Britain the debt burden of individuals is hardly out of the papers. So....this omnipresent force making us want everything - what is it??
What do you reckon with our obsession with celebrity? Perhaps this is one of those social phenomena that make us all want every thing now! Many of the arguments of our experts interviewed for PEuT get back at some stage to the way in which we burn carbon to fuel our life styles. This might be a rich source of argument - but it could have immediate impact on what high value things we buy, what we eat, what we wear - our life style. But we have to be careful. Popular culture is what reaches the many - it's always been there: so perhaps we need a different sort of celebrity that reaches out in a way that makes us want to care for ourselves and our environment more...
Interesting stuff about this in the last show - thanks to your comments + a fascinating interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury - who said he'd conduct a service in front of a melting glacier to make the point that climate change is a moral issue.
This is good, whether religious or not
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I have a prediction, that the overpopulation threat to the planets resources will not be as great a problem as you think. And if there are problems they will not be what you expect them to be.
In the 1960's, when I was growing up, the scientific consensus was that overpopulation would mean there would not be enough food or wealth for 6 billion people. The clever scientists had worked it all out with their wonderful scientific models !I can remember being scared as a child by this thought, how naive I was to believe a scientific consensus.
This has not been the case, we cannot find a way of sharing it out, but there is more than enough food and wealth for all. The challenge is to distribute it to those in need.
The population of Western Europe will have dropped from 750 Million to 680 million by the end of the century. This will lead to problems of too many old people for economies to support etc.
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Yes, Julian, what is it that drives this 'lifestyle' obsession? I have noted many times that "Standard of Living" is closely tracked by lifetime mileage and the same holds true, of course for carbon output, but not for 'nett happiness', whatever that might be.
And, John, there doesn't seem to be enough food for six billion, or why are so many folk starving? I know, I know, distribution! How will we accomplish efficient distribution when the oil runs out? I know, I know, we'll find a substitute - everything is substitutable, isn't it?
Let them eat cake. From :
Julian, I think the key may lie in the loss of the sense of community in this age of ultimate individualism. It is evident in the search for and worship of celebrity - "Me! Me! Look at Me! See how fine a life I live!", etc.
Also noted before is the tendency of dinner conversation to turn on who has just returned from the most exotic foreign destination and remark that, "it isn't spoiled yet, (but you can see the signs)" and my response through gritted teeth, "Yeah, your bloody footprints!"
ed
We are the population problem.
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Sorry, folks, last link should have been , we're the population that's more of a problem.
xx
ed
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Well put Ed
Julian, we will doubtless "give you a break" the moment you stop going off on frolics. I make no apology for being blunt - someone has to be. However, I do very much appreciate your reply and note your comments.
If, as you say, "population is the massive issue" why aren't the 成人快手 tackling it head on? The longer it is left in the wilderness, the quicker the wilderness will be destroyed by policy makers driven simply by greed, the economy and market forces, (I refer by recent example to the latest policy to lift planning controls on the Green Belt). I know that you'll think I am being too simplistic, and I do understand the need for improved general ecological education - but the strategy should all be properly underpinned. The risk of not doing so is that we end up debating niceties and not getting to the nub. Does the Pope recognise the population issue?
The need for the celeb thing and consumerism generally is a result of not having better things to do. Gardening would be an excellent alternative, but of course - this requires a garden.
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No break needed...just a joke. In the last programme we tell of how forests, especially boreal forests could turn against us. I'll put a blog on the site later today. Interesting stuff. Work from Laura Kippers, University of California, Merced, indicates that forests which dry out start to release more carbon dioxide than they consume. It's a tussle between the microbes etc on the forest floor which rapidly increase their decomposition functions, which release carbon into the atmosphere by respiration. The carbon sucked in by the trees via photosynthesis is less in a warming drying forest. We harbour a slightly conforting thought that forests are a weapon against global warming: perhaps only the moist tropical ones are. And of course, fresh in our minds, was the drought that casued massive fires in Borneo and Indonesia a few years back. Once again, it's about tackling the causes of CC, not the symptoms. Also in the final show we have Jacquie McGlade (Exec, EEA), Sanjayan (Nature Conservancy) and Tony Juniper (FOE) fleshing these arguments out - much of the content inspired by this blog.
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