Global Emissions

Global emissions continue to rise, and there is nothing that can be done about it. That's because two regions are developing fast and they're not going to give up their futures for everyone else, and nor should they.

Here's a couple of graphs to illustrate, the first being global emissions of carbon dioxide worldwide:

Emissions have steadily increased, becoming steeper exponentially. The only small downticks are when there is a recession, and other exceptional events.

Then, let's look at how these emissions appear when broken down by region:

If we study these regions carefully, we quickly see that China and the rest of Asia (excluding China and India) account for most of the increase. But, I'd suggest not getting too proud of yourselves in Europe or North America as their reductions I suspect are largely due to offshoring, or moving production to Asia and China. 

So, emitters that matter are: China, Asia (excluding China and India), North America, and Europe.

What can be done? Well, consume less would be a start, and when that's done, use civil engineering, soil science and the like to deal with the changes occurring.

Blaming tourists and giving them a guilt trip over their carbon miles is simply a deflection at best, or at worst it is sending consumers in a direction whereby they're fleeced by unscrupulous businesses. Likewise, greenwashing by companies is all PR, nothing more than that. 

Why can nothing be done? Does any sane individual think more than two billion people will change their behaviour when that behaviour is counter to their own progress? Yeah, give it up, stop with the delusions. 

Reject Personal Carbon Credits

Your personal carbon footprint and digital ID will be linked. This stupid idea won't go away until we all say enough, and make it go away.

 

Joe Biden Makes Sound

Earth Day summit and what do we get? Completely unrealistic emissions targets, that's what. Confirmation the world has gone mad. Wasn't a pandemic that wasn't really a pandemic enough already? 

It's easy to see why the USA cannot, and I stress cannot, reduce emissions by up to 52% (note the 2%, clever not rounding it eh, why not make it 55.75% and sound really authoritative). Population growth. By 2030 the US will have in the region of 360 million people. They'll all want to be fed, housed, and transported. Halving emissions is a pipe dream and foolish. Foolish because it's genocidal in scale. Think about that, even if they only try and fail badly, a lot of people are going to die. 

Surviving the Carbon Age

Enough with the negativity, this blog post addresses how to deal with the rising levels of carbon dioxide. Here it's all about the future and solutions, the way forward.

We find ourselves in a downward spiral. At the same time as carbon dioxide emissions are rising, forest coverage is decreasing. Forests are disappearing at an alarming rate. The deforestation is having an effect on the climate, not just in reducing the number of trees available to eat carbon dioxide but also in relation to cloud formation and precipitation. It's not enough that one country acts as clouds don't observe national boundaries. Forests do a lot of good, they hold and condition the soil, suck in carbon dioxide, and help form clouds. We need forests.

But this alone isn't enough, we also need to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, the worst of which is carbon dioxide. That means being more efficient. I suggest we avoid adopting already proven failures like electric vehicles (EV's). Why? The simple reason is they don't work, they're not good cars and rely on technology running parallel to the liquid fuels industry. EV's rely on infrastructure never intended to power an automotive fleet.

My solution is three-fold:

Work on achieving greater efficiency using current technology.

What I'm talking about is reducing fuel consumption by making the engines of industry and consumerism work better. Keep developing the internal combustion engine to the point where you can run your car for a year on a single tank of gas. Why not?

This seems an obvious approach and one you never hear. It's an approach that doesn't throw the baby out with the bath water.

Put the forests back.

Instead of talking about carbon all the time (which appears to be a code word for the evils of industrialisation) and carbon trading schemes (which no-one understands), structure the world economy to reward forest creation. The more trees, the more carbon dioxide is processed by those trees. This would help a lot. I know what you are going to say, carbon trading effectively does what I'm saying, but the problem with that approach is it misses the point by making trees data units rather than living things. Everyone likes their trees, they don't care about carbon units.

Japan is a major industrialised power and they have 60% forest coverage so I'm going to use that as the benchmark. I've done some sums and it appears worldwide forest coverage of around 42% keeps things as they are now. There would be no gain as human activity from industrialisation would still keep adding greenhouse gases into the atmosphere (although at a reduced rate if my other two suggestions are followed). Greater forest cover is required to sequester the carbon dioxide that is emitted unsustainably, bearing in mind that these trees also need to be replaced as they rot and burn.

Here are the top 10 countries ranked by total size of forest coverage (with their percentage of forest coverage alongside):

Russia (49%)
Canada (49%)
Brazil (56%)
USA (34%)
China (22%)
Australia (16%)
DR Congo (50%)
Argentina (34%)
Indonesia (46%)
India (24%)

These 10 provide the big carbon sinks. We could expand this to the top 50 if you like (this is purely to illustrate). They all have work to do, some more than others. Across the board, there needs to be a 60% increase in forest size. Do this and together with greater industrial efficiency, you're almost there.

Globally, set up a system of trade tariffs that acknowledges the rate of forest creation in each individual country. Failure to meet targets would mean raising tariffs and less income for those not playing ball. This would be a new form of GATT (General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade). Forget Kyoto Protocol and its arbitrary 1990 benchmark, what my benchmark does is acknowledge that humans are the cause of the problem and the solution is collective in nature, but those areas settled earlier and deforested worst must do more to correct the harm. The tariff regime would take account of total economic output and local climate and soil types, so areas that find it harder to grow trees aren't handicapped. China would be a country required to do a lot, as would India and the USA.

What about small countries that emit a lot of carbon dioxide? I checked this and one example is South Korea. However while being a big emitter, their forest coverage is at 63%, so they would meet the benchmark. Once at 60% of forest coverage worldwide, trade tariffs would be set to zero for all nations. Global free trade so long as forest coverage remains at 60%.

Keep developing new technology.

In addition to the above, work on developing new techniques such as enhanced weathering for agriculture. This is where mineral rocks are spread on agricultural land, the effect of which is to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

And finally, work on mitigating the effects of climate change, learn how to change and adjust. Not all climate change is a negative. Readers will note I haven't included any changes in individual human behaviour. That's because, after hundreds of thousands of years of evolution humans are unlikely to change their habits. All that can be done is to keep improving, keep advancing, and plant trees.

There we have it. Keep it sensible, keep it simple.