Wednesday, February 13, 2019

It's Actually Not That Bad

Climate Change is happening, and we're not doing anything significant to avoid it. Is avoid the right word? Not really. It is already happening, after all. A more accurate word would be 'minimise'. We need to minimise the damage.

It's not an on/off switch. When people say 'Look, it'll happen no matter what we do", that is, to put it bluntly, pants. There is a whole range of severity of climate change. The Paris Agreement was supposed to aim to keep us well below 2 degrees warming. Particularly vulnerable countries, like Pacific islands, argued to keep it below 1.5C warming. NASA's data for 2018 shows 0.8C warming so far. This has already had terrible effects. We're currently on track for somewhere between 3 and 5C warming by 2100.

Numbers, numbers. What do they mean?

They mean people dying, when otherwise they wouldn't have died, and suffering terribly. A huge increase, for example, in babies and very young children dying from malaria, which is a disease I don't think we in malaria-free countries, with access to vaccines, really fully appreciate the horror of. At +2C an additional 40 to 60 million people could be exposed to malaria. At +2C 1.5 billion people each year will live in areas without access to usable water. This is the temperature increase we are pretending to aim at. In fact, even the measures laid out in the Paris Agreement don't leave us anywhere near +2C. If we followed them (and we aren't), we'd end up with warming of at least +3C.

But Elon Musk.

Technology is not going to save us. We need technology, we need people developing solar, wind, tidal; we need people looking at fusion; we need to stop closing down nuclear plants when they're much the better option to the coal and gas that often ends up replacing them; we need to be exploring negative emissions technology and we need to be studying and debating the merits of geo-engineering. We need bio-tech. We need all the tools we can get our hands on. It's still not going to be enough, because we have to make massive changes immediately, and most of the possible tech solutions are still decades away.

We need to change our lifestyles.

We need to stop flying, because it is, far and away, the most flagrant waste of the CO2 budget that someone can do. We need to stop driving one to a car, in fact, we need to stop using private cars. We need to have diets that are mainly vegetarian. We need to stop buying things we don't need.

But this is - this is crazy-talk, isn't it? Give up flying? How could anyone possibly do that? Take the bus? Walk? Not buy something unless I actually need it? It would be like living back in the Olden Days, with mud floors and hair shirts and nothing to do but weave and watch hangings.

Except that it's not. Some stuff in that list you might not be able to give up. You may have a small kid who you need to drop off at creche on your way to work, and the only way to do that is to drive. Or you might live on the opposite side of the planet from your relatives. But if your flying is just for holidays, maybe you can give it up. You can try it out, and see how long you stick it. If it's for work, you might find that your boss is actually ok with you having online meetings instead - you could see if that's the case. It's something they can brag about and put in environmental statements. Deciding not to buy stuff unless you really need it is actually great. In the end, it saves you money and saves you tidying. Here's the late David McKay:


About 50% of current CO2e emissions are due to the activities of the top 10% emitters, so a change in the lifestyle of the wealthiest has the capacity to make significant changes, fast. And on a global scale, 'wealthy' includes a lot of people who think of themselves as fairly average or maybe even a bit broke. In 2013 Ireland had the third-highest per capita emissions in the EU. As the CSO said, "At 12.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per capita in 2013, Ireland’s emissions were 45% higher than the EU average of 8.8 tonnes."

We can make a difference. Climate change is not an on/off switch, it's a sliding scale - it does matter if you add to it or not. And we're social creatures, habits spread among us. Already some of my friends have given up flying because I did and I told them why. If you find blocks to low-CO2 choices, and there's something the government can do to enable you to make better choices, then tell your TD or local councillor. Because if they make that change - make a cycle-path safer, for example - that will not only enable you, it will enable other people.

Climate change is bad. It's devastating, what is happening and what will happen. But giving up flying, going vegetarian (or mostly), waiting for the bus, not buying some gadget - that's actually not that bad.

Sunday, February 10, 2019

This isn't what I ordered, though.

I do not like green eggs and ham. It's nothing personal, I just prefer French toast. Sam knows this, we've spoken about it at some length. I have to say he was really pushy about the whole green eggs and ham thing, but eventually, he accepted my right to eschew that dish, and enjoy French toast.

So this morning when I headed over to his little restaurant for my usual Sunday brunch, I was understandably dismayed when he removed the cover with a flourish to reveal his signature porcine and poultry recipe.

"Sam," I said, "We've talked about this. It doesn't matter what you do, I will never like green eggs and ham."

"But this is French toast," he said beaming at me.

"No it's not, it's fucking ham and eggs."

"No, it's not," he repeated. "Words change," he added. "Language is continually evolving."

"Right," I said. "But my taste in breakfast isn't. If you have decided," I said, "that now, green eggs and ham is called French toast (and by the way, 'evolving' is not the same as 'changing by decree') that means that all previous statements regarding French toast are now off the table. Let me elaborate," I said. "Words do not have the power to magically transform matter. If you now refer to what was formerly known as green eggs and ham as French toast, it does not make it that thing which was formerly known as French toast. When I said I liked French toast, I meant I liked that thing which was at that time called French toast, I did not mean that I liked it because it was called French toast." We regarded each other, and then we regarded the dish. "What are you now calling French toast?" I asked.

He looked at me levelly. "French toast," he said.

"Oh my god, Sam," I yelled. "Enough with the fucking green eggs and ham. I don't like them, I will never like them. Can you not just fucking leave it?"

"But this is French toast," he said. "Made to the recipe of colonial France."

Which is why I am having breakfast at home.

Saturday, February 9, 2019

I am not a believer

You'll know, if you know me, that I was raised Catholic and am now atheist. I do bang on about it a bit. Sorry. The propensity to believe in things which are not true, or to ignore things that are true, is something I find profoundly frightening.

I am now going to commit the social crime of telling you about a dream I had.

When I was a kid - somewhere in my early teens, I think - I had a nightmare. I woke up covered in sweat. I've never forgotten it. In my dream, I was sitting with my family and other faceless people watching the TV. There was some kind of political procession or parade being shown. One of the people in the parade was a teenage boy who was balancing on rotating blades - those things you see on the front of tractors, like giant lawnmower blades. As each blade moved forward, he'd step back onto the next one, like an acrobat. The tractor juddered and the boy fell into the blades, but everyone else in the parade pretended it wasn't happening, and so did everyone in the room with me.

Anyway, that was the worst nightmare I ever had. I may possibly have had it because that was around the time I read about Lenin and the famine in the Volga valley. What I got from it was that this man, who I think had set out with good intentions, had ignored the reality of the famine because it undermined his ideology, and in doing so, he made a terrible situation much worse, and people who could have been helped and saved, instead died horribly.

So from my early teens I had this scent in my nostrils, the bad smell of choosing to believe what you want to be true, rather than dealing with messy reality. It never seems to end well, even when, sometimes, the lies seem to be told with the best intentions.

I found that there were things I was wrong about. Lots of things. So I learnt that no matter how little I wanted to listen to the other side of an argument, I had to listen to it. I had to be brutally honest with myself and lay out my own reasoning and examine it and test it.

I find the alternative to this - to blindly accept things, even when they seem to contradict reality - I find this nothing short of terrifying. I am sure that this is not the way we should be heading. And yet, it is. People I believed to be progressive, who were proud of the fact they had shrugged off religion, now attack the very idea of asking questions, of thinking critically, of saying that messy reality matters. And honestly, I do not think that this can end well.