Climate Change - Beginning My Transition with Education (27.7.21)
- Storm Mackenzie
- Jul 27, 2021
- 4 min read
I'm new to the concept of Climate Change. While I know of its existence and have a basic understanding of what it is, I'm lacking in a lot of the details, and many of my ideas are based of half truths (and straight out false facts).
What I've learnt today:
1. There's only a certain level of carbon dioxide that can be in the atmosphere considered 'survivable' for life on earth. And we have passed that level.
2. There are ways to measure CO2 levels and temperature from BEFORE humans started measuring and keeping a record of such things. Details in ancient tree rings can give insight on the temperature many decades or even centuries ago. The CO2 levels frozen in ice can be dated and used to work out what level of CO2 was present when that ice first froze, many, many years earlier (we are talking about ice that has been frozen at the ice caps for a VERY long time). Since the 60s, humans have started properly measuring and recording this data, making recent measurements much more accurate and believable to many.
The general consensus: CO2 is slowly but surely increasing!
3. There are lots of documentaries and movies out there that discuss Climate Change, and how we can fight it on both a massive, industrial and governmental front, and also from the smaller steps we can take in our own, individual lives.
Bill McKibben Does the Math – A Movie Trailer
2040 - A Movie Trailer
4. There have been global movements to stop Climate Change in the past, such as the Kyoto Protocol. These seem to have helped, but evidence isn't strong enough to show that these are having the kind of impact we need to win this war against ourselves. We've since had the Paris Discussion of 2015 which lead to many countries and leaders in the world collaborating on ways to reduce emissions, hit specified targets, and report on their data relatively openly every 5 years to help hold themselves and each other responsible (a little friendly competition can go a long way, after all).
5. Australia had originally set great goals, which have recently become annulled by the current government. What was once labelling us as a world leader with our Clean Energy Act has since been forgotten and pushed aside. We've had a lot of community action, though it seems to have majorly diminished in the light of Covid19 and the pandemic. Australia has put some focus on future industries such as solar power, thermal power, wave power, and biomass.
6. We are slowly taking tiny, incremental steps to make a difference. From improving day to day products, such as the efficacy of lighting and insulation to reduce emissions, energy use and use of heaters/air conditioning in the home. Or in the way we are increasing use of electric cars (Western Australia is increasing the number of electric cars in their fleet of government vehicles, as well as increasing electric vehicle charging stations across the state, primarily on main routes to rural towns such as Esperance and Kalgoorlie).
7. Despite becoming increasingly efficient, our total energy usage is also increasing. This means that we aren't having an overall net effect on our energy usage, as everything we save with our new, efficient technologies, we then waste with how much extra energy we are beginning to use as a society.
Jevons' paradox - Blake Alcott
8. Despite everything we are doing, it's just simply not enough, and our energy consumption isn't reflecting the decreases needed to reduce CO2 emissions and hit the goals that we have forgotten about as the world focuses on COVID19 and our government pushes Climate Change aside for later. The only solution is to think of QUICK ways to move towards a low carbon society, and implement them along with these smaller, incremental changes.
9. By promoting increasing suburban spread (through grants and pushing for first home buyers to build on vacant land rather than buy established), the Government is ultimately increasing our need to travel further and further for work, and creating even more carbon emissions as we require more cars, trains, buses, etc to travel. If there was more encouragement for leaving rural areas rural, reducing clearing large masses of bush for new developments, and keeping the concentration of people in a tighter area, closer to jobs and work and schools, then less travel would be necessary, more people would be able to switch to other methods of transport such as walking or riding bicycles, and we'd be a whole lot better off.
10. Our transport system is a large part of the current emissions of carbon into the atmosphere... We need to find ways to change our system, promoting cycling, walking, and even ride sharing/ car pooling over taking cars or public transport to work and the shops. How do we do this? Perhaps through incentives, increasing security for bicycles in popular public areas (bike lockers?), improving knowledge on how to ride bikes in and around roads and traffic/pedestrians to make everyone safer and improve confidence, or perhaps having discounts on licensing fees if you've driven your vehicle under a certain figure (encouraging people to use their cars less to save on such big fees and expenses, and also reflecting how much you use your car in how much you pay for it).
And for the moment, that's it! I've got a LOT more to learn from here!
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