Unhelpful approaches to climate change
It's not too late to stop runaway climate change
Climate change is largely the result of over 150 years of unsustainable over-consumption of fossil fuels and other natural resources by today’s industrialised and wealthy countries. It is clear that solutions that do not significantly reduce consumption in wealthy nations are unlikely to rein in climate change.
There are four basic questions we need to ask to evaluate any 'solution' proposed to address climate change:
Does it result in a net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the timeframe required?
Is it equitable on a global level? (We should all be concerned about schemes that say it's okay for people in the industrialised world to keep consuming as usual.)
Does it avoid social or environmental risks for this or future generations?
A solution is viable only if we can answer 'yes' to all these questions.
Many of the potential solutions to climate change being proposed by the major political parties fail on one or more of these questions. This is worrying given the urgency of our need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avoid runaway climate change, and the lag time for reductions in emissions to have an effect on climate. Weak and evasive options waste precious time, money and political goodwill. Worse, they give a false sense that we are addressing climate change,
Some dangerous distractions to designing and implementing real solutions to climate change are:
