Enough about IT, let’s talk about something else…

I remember when I first started hearing stuff about this climate change thing. I can remember I was still at school, which means that it was a long time ago. And if a school kid heard about it the scientific community must have been hearing about global warming for decades.
Now all of a sudden it’s back on the front pages. Is someone planning to run a big charity concert about it or what?
To me the real problems are 2: in general it is commercial operations that generate most of the pollution and if we want to change this it’ll take some serious culture change globally. This second point is really tough as no global organisation has enough power to actually push such a change. Can you imagine the UN trying to do something like that? Well, they did try, but the Kyoto treaty is still not enough, not all countries have agreed to it and the sanctions are not 100% clear to me. I would advise you to watch “The Corporation” a very educating documentary.
There is also a major problem with growing economies like India or China. The reasoning is that if such countries, with their huge population reach a level of comfort (I don’t know how to call it) we’ll face massive problems. I was reading sometime ago that if all Chinese people were to use toilet paper, we’d have to chop-off most of the forests in the world. The same sort of reasoning would work if car ownership in India reaches the same levels as in Europe. So what can we do? Tell these growing economies that they’ll have to comply with 1 car per family? Based on what? We (the Western civilisation) have promoted this sort of world. We have told these countries “work hard and you’ll get your detached house in the suburbs with a gas-guzzling car in the driveway!” This is probably the reason why people are working their arse off in these countries, to one day get to our level of comfort.
So what do we do? Why should we tell these countries that they should care about the environment? And shut down their obsolete production plants for heavy industry (which by the way we sold them after Kyoto) because they pollute too much? Why should we tell them to invest in renewable energy if we don’t? See the problem?
Any ideas on how to fix this? Well, we’d have to seriously re-think the way we live today and only when we will have changed we will be able to preach to growing economies. The problem for me is that cultural change takes generations, and right now it doesn’t seem like we have a lot of time. How long is it going to take before we don’t feel like your car is the reflection of your personality? I mean cars in particular haven’t really changed in the last 100 years. We didn’t have (or maybe it was just starting) phones 100 years ago and now we (supposedly) can browse the web at super-fast speeds from anywhere. How is it possible that cars are still using the same 4 wheels, on rubber tyres, moving thanks to a combustion engine? Seriously, what difference do you see between a Ford Model T and an Audi Q7? They both have 4 wheels, a combustion engine and are designed to go on tarmac.
Ideally we should give the example. “yes, we tried the 1 car-per-person, but it’s not working: congestion, pollution, etc. It’s not worth it. Invest heavily in public transport!” But we’re not doing it, so why should they do it?
When we went to Jamaica, I remember drinking (lots) of RedStripe in very old bottles. These bottles must have been re-used hundreds of times. Brilliant! Why throw it away and pretend that if you put it in a recycling bin, thanks to some sort of magic we’ll be able to get a brand new bottle out of it, without having to waste any energy? I guess Germany is the only country I know where this approach is taken seriously. But how are we going (or who is going) to tell Jamaicans that they should stick to their old re-used bottles of RedStripe instead of getting a new bottle each time? They want to be like us and be able to drink their beer in a brand new bottle every time!
Personally I don’t consider myself as being exceptionally environmental friendly. Yes I do fly a lot (but it’s for work and I will now STOP travelling –lookout for my suitcase on ebay!) and our flat being old, is not the best example of an energy saving one. I also tend to have quite a few gadgets pumping power 24/7 and my motorbike probably pollutes as a medium-sized tanker.
On the other hand I don’t have a car and only use my bike a few times a week, don’t eat red meat everyday, I shop at the local market (trying to buy only seasonal products) I try to recycle most of our trash (mainly packaging), I tend not to leave chargers plugged if not needed. Does this make me an eco-freak? I really don’t think so. Does it make a big difference? Definitely not! So why am I doing it?
Good question. It is not for good conscience, that’s for sure. I guess that many of the problems we have today need a complete re-think of how we live: what we eat, how we get around town, what we do with our trash, how we use new technologies.
So, here’s the million dollar question. Who should sit down and do something about it? Actually even better, who has the power to do such a thing? The UN? Wal-Mart? What do you think?