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Coffee, confection and the trillion dollar climate connection!
Peter Vintila, Online Opinion
A just completed UN study calls for a $20 trillion global investment in climate change abatement over the next 20 years. This higher-than-usual price tag is no doubt a gross cost figure. Doubtless, too, the $20 trillion figure responds to the demands of a more alarmed scientific community. In any event, $20 trillion is equivalent to1.5 per cent of global GDP for the coming two decades. That’s about three times the rate estimated by Nicholas Stern for the first 20 years of climate change mitigation.
Stern’s estimates weren’t wrong. It’s just that he costed a 500ppm of CO2e concentration target – a target now widely considered inadequate. Climate science has become more demanding.
… These tougher targets, the UN is now telling us, will cost $20 trillion. Is that beyond us? And what of the companion worry: “even if the rich world can scrape together its share, the poor can’t – or won’t – so we’re doomed.”
… Let’s have another look at the scale of the task: 1.5 per cent of global GDP or $1 trillion at the moment? If we divide that sum by the 1.1 billion inhabitants of the developed world, it comes to $900 per person per year or $2.50 per person per day. That’s significantly less than a half-way-decent cup of coffee or a worthwhile ice cream. At many places in Australia, there’d be little left after buying a can of coke or a small chocolate bar.
These are currencies we all comprehend and we are in deep discretionary spending country. Why not put these goodies on the table instead of rationed rice or cornbread?
Making do with less of any of these would do many of us – myself included – good. That’s to pay for not just for ourselves but to set the whole world on viable course. Can you believe that? Can you believe that we gamble with the planet for the sake of a little coffee, coke or confection? But I forget the plight of the serious coffee addict or chocaholic. So let me move on to other options.
(25 February 2008)
Contributor Chris Shaw (the “feral metallurgist”) writes:
Hi Possums
This went past two or three weeks ago. I was impressed.
Welcome to the Future – Climate Change vs the Rich (video)
Richard Neville, Home Page Daily
It took a while, but now awareness has reached critical mass. Ancient social commentator, Richard Neville, sums up the last 40 years in a flash and looks ahead at the likely impact of climate shock on the high priests of the shopping religion. Should the Forbes billionaires be quaking in their Lear Jets?
(X March 2008)
Suggested by contributor Michael Killalea. Futurist Richard Neville was “originally known for publishing and editing the counterculture magazine Oz in Australia and the UK in the 1960s and early 1970s.” -BA
Mitchell goes green
Canuck challenges more NHL players to become involved
Iain MacIntyre, Vancouver Sun
… [Willie Mitchell of the Vancouver Canucks hockey team said] “You make choices and I choose to be a professional hockey player. We fly around, and that’s not great for global warming with all the emissions from our planes. But where you can be conscientious about it, I think it’s the right thing to do.”
More than 500 of his professional colleagues agreed and signed up, as Mitchell did, for the Carbon Neutral Challenge — an initiative partnered by the NHL Players’ Association and the David Suzuki Foundation.
Players buy carbon credits to offset emissions from their travel. The players’ union and Suzuki Foundation jointly announced this week that 523 players have joined the Carbon Neutral Challenge. Enough credits have been purchased to offset 5,000 tonnes of carbon emissions, the equivalent of taking 1,000 cars off the road for a year.
Mitchell went a step further, selling his gas-gulping SUV to purchase a Toyota Prius, a small hybrid vehicle. For home games, Mitchell’s car is dwarfed by teammates’ Range Rovers, Cadillac Escalades and other low-mileage SUVs.
“My buddies back home tell me I’m driving a potato,” he smiled. “But I tell them I’ve had it three months and I’ve filled it up only four times.
“I’ll be honest; I had an H2 [Hummer] at one time. I had an H2 in Minnesota and an Escalade and all that. I was at the point where I wasn’t so concerned about a flashy vehicle and more concerned about [the Earth] my kids were going to grow up with. I’m not perfect, by no means, but you’ve got to start somewhere. I recycle. I changed out the light bulbs, put in the LEDs. I put my newspapers in the blue box, take the labels off cans. I just feel like it’s my obligation.”
(13 March 2008)
Suggested by contributor and green sports correspondent Bill Henderson:
This really needs the real newspaper picture and local Van fan context cause who else knows or cares who Willie Mitchell is. Still somewhat consciouness-raising.
On the Ball: Good sports
Sarah K. Burkhalter, Gristmill
Here’s a fun game for the whole family: You name a sport; I’ll tell you how it’s jumping on the green bandwagon. Ready? OK!
Baseball: Milwaukee Brewers first basement Prince Fielder has become a vegetarian after his wife gave him a copy of the book Skinny Bitch. He’s probably not in their target demographic, but whatevs.
Major League Baseball has teamed up with the Natural Resources Defense Council for a Team Greening Program, designed to “support and coordinate the many environmentally sensitive practices now pursued by virtually every Major League Baseball Club.” (Who knew?)
(16 March 2008)
Project Bud Burst
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)
A National Phenology Network Field Campaign for Citizen Scientists
Project BudBurst has started!
Join us in collecting important climate change data on the timing of leafing and flowering in your area through Project BudBurst! This national field campaign targets native tree and flower species across the country. With your help, we will be compiling valuable environmental and climate change information around the United States.
Project BudBurst is a national field campaign for citizen scientists designed to engage the public in the collection of important climate change data based on the timing of leafing and flowering of trees and flowers. BudBurst participants take careful observations of the phenological events such as the first bud burst, first leafing, first flower, and seed or fruit dispersal of a diversity of tree and flower species, including weeds and ornamentals. The citizen science observations and records are reported into the BudBurst data base.
Thousands of citizen scientists participated in the inaugural pilot test of Project BudBurst in 2007 and as a result useful data was collected in a consistent way across the country. Scientists can use this data to learn about the responses of individual plant species to climatic variation locally, regionally, and nationally, and to detect longer-term impacts of climate change by comparing with historical data. The enthusiastic response and robust participation in the 2007 pilot effort made it clear that there was sufficient interest from the American public to expand Project BudBurst in 2008!
(February 2008)
