Bean Counting and Handy Hints
At Scientific American it’s all about climate change, “humanity’s first planetwide experiment”. In ‘Clash: What Will Climate Change Cost Us?‘, they talk to three leading economic policy thinkers on the topic of how cutting emissions of greenhouse gases would affect the global economy.
Sir Nicholas Stern, Bjorn Lomborg and Gary Yohe
On a lighter note, the article ‘10 Solutions for Climate Change’ tells us that there are, after all, personal lifestyle changes that you can make to help reduce your carbon impact.
Forego Fossil Fuels: stop using oil, coal, natural gas and avoid products made from them.
Infrastructure Upgrade: buildings worldwide contribute around one third of all greenhouse gas emissions, so insulate and build better.
Move Closer to Work: transportation is the second leading source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.
Consume Less: the easiest way to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions is simply to buy less stuff.
Be Efficient: citizens of many developed countries are profligate wasters of energy, so do more with less.
Go Vegetarian: use less land, produce less greenhouse gases
Stop Cutting Down Trees: every year, 33 million acres of forests are cut down. Timber harvesting in the tropics alone contributes 1.5 billion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere, 20% of human-made greenhouse gas emissions.
Unplug: U.S. citizens spend more money on electricity to power devices when off than when on.
One Child: there will be at least nine billion humans by 2050. It takes 54 acres to sustain an average human being.
Future Fuels: every alternative seems to have its downside, but stick with it, something will turn up.
Sounds easy. I’ll pencil it in for early next week.
Sphere: Related ContentPete Smith @ November 28, 2007
They put those solutions forward? Nah, don’t believe you. Your pulling my left nipple.
So that means;
Forego Fossil Fuels: stop using oil, coal, natural gas and avoid products made from them. Aha. How exactly?
Infrastructure Upgrade: buildings worldwide contribute around one third of all greenhouse gas emissions, so insulate and build better. Would need to bonk most architects and accountants on the head to make this happen!
Move Closer to Work: transportation is the second leading source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. Would be nice but the trend is further away in the UK because high house prices mean people are stuck where they are if they move job.
Consume Less: the easiest way to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions is simply to buy less stuff. So, become a ‘compacter’. Sounds like fun.
Be Efficient: citizens of many developed countries are profligate wasters of energy, so do more with less. OK
Go Vegetarian: aha, can really see that happening.
Stop Cutting Down Trees: so, stop that twitchy human habit of filing anything & everything and just rely on computers not crashing. So we’re all off to see a behavioural physcologist then!
Unplug: U.S. citizens spend more money on electricity to power devices when off than when on. OK. But let’s impose timer switches in all new devices when not in use.
One Child: forget your basic human urges
Future Fuels: every alternative seems to have its downside, but stick with it, something will turn up. Wait around for the next bus.
“They put those solutions forward?” Yes, aren’t they good? I defy you to argue with any of them.
Yup, was just in the middle of doing so.
“Aha. How exactly?” You’ll find more detail if you click the link to the article. I cut a lot out to save space.