[lit-ideas] Re: global luke-warming -- addendum
- From: Paul Stone <pas@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 12:45:48 -0400
At 12:02 PM 4/17/2006, you wrote:
Paul: You want selfish? What could be more selfish than panicking because
a whole bunch of people's lives are at stake?
If global warming does threaten lives, it will be those on the margin that
will suffer most. Those living in countries like Bangladesh. People whose
lifestyles have absolutely no impact on the environment. Meanwhile, the
major polluters are shouting about self-interest and economic cost.
But, it's the developing nations that are GOING to be the problem. The UK,
Germany, Canada, even RUssia have negative growth in CO2 emissions. US is
at about 10% and Australia at 15%. It's the growing, developing problems
with HUGE populations that are becoming a problem. China, India, Brazil,
South Korea, and weirdly enough Saudi Arabia, have shown a huge recent
increase in CO2 emissions. How does the developed world, which is clearly
taking steps to reduce the emissions, or at least claw them back a little,
possibly twist the other half's arm sufficiently to make THEM take up the
cause? The thing is, we really can't.
Then you look at curious cases that are governed, not only by development,
but by geography and choices for compensating that.
Australia is very hot and needs electricity to run all those A/C units.
They produce huge amounts of emissions because there aren't that many
inhabitants, it's a huge country, very spread out and the method they use
(coal) to produce electricity is very high in Co2 emissions. Norway and
Sweden are adjacent to each other, and both have very cold climates, but
Sweden is low on the per capita CO2 and Norway near the top because
Sweden's Biomass technology is very efficient and non-polluting (in terms
of CO2) compared to Norway's coal supply.
Canada is much colder than the US and is much more economical than the US,
but that is in some part due to the fact that we have quite a bit of
non-polluting hydro-electric power plants. It is also in part because we
are NOT so much in love with the "car" and have substantially larger 'sin'
taxes on gas and other things which DO effect our mentality for using less
fuel.
Once again, it really all comes down to not only development, but choices
as that development goes.
p
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
