Sunday November 7, 2021
One week into COP26 – the UN’s annual Conference of the Parties on climate change – the event makes me think of a hairdresser’s appointment: lots of fuss at the top, and nothing happening farther down.
The Conference started after some 200 countries signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – UNFCCC if you enjoy alphabet-soup – which came into effect in 1994. It was set up at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, two years before.
The goal, at that time, was to reduce emissions that cause global warming. So far, from what I can see, no nation has actually achieved those goals. Some have made modest reductions, but most have increased their emissions.
This year’s Conference, in Glasgow, Scotland, loudly proclaims a couple of significant agreements.
First, 165 countries signed an agreement to phase out coal as an energy source. Coal is, undoubtedly, the most polluting of the fossil fuels we rely on for industrial power and electricity generation.
But not immediately. By sometime in the 2030s for major economies, by the 2040s for the rest of the world.
Also, the world’s three biggest coal burners – China, the U.S., and India -- did not sign.
Meaningless promises
Second, 100 world leaders committed to end deforestation by 2030. Those leaders included U.S. President Joe Biden, China’s Xi Jinping, and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro.
Early reports also included Indonesia, home of the third-largest tropical rainforests, after the Amazon and the Congo. But the next day, Indonesia pulled out.
Given Donald Trump’s gutting of Environment Protection standards in the U.S., and Bolsonaro’s razing of Amazon forests, I have little confidence in the deforestation agreement.
Or, for that matter, any other agreements that the 39,000 national representatives thronging into Glasgow may achieve. Because they’re carefully avoiding the one crucial issue that underlies all of these crises – population growth.
It’s no accident, I suggest, that the three biggest coal-burning nations, who refused to commit to eliminating coal fuels, are also the three most populous nations in the world.
Currently, China has approximately 1.45 billion people. India, close behind at 1.39 billion. The U.S. has only 332 million people – but they produce twice as much pollutant as all of India’s much larger population. Only China tops the U.S. pollutant production.
And it will get worse. By 2050, the target date for many agreements at the Glasgow Convention, India’s population will surpass China’s.
Indeed, in the listings of the world’s top ten most populous countries, only China and Russia are expected to reduce their populations by 2050.
In 30 years, total world population is forecast to reach 9.73 billion – roughly 1.5 billion more than today.
That means that even if countries achieve minor per capita reductions, their total emissions will continue to rise.
Indefinitely.
The ecological footprint
Unless population growth is somehow brought under control.
Michael Rees, a professor at UBC Vancouver, coined the phrase “human footprint” to define the amount of biologically productive land needed to sustain each human life – food, water, heat, wastes… Every human on earth today has a “footprint” of about 1.5 hectares.
It’s a relatively simple calculation. “Anybody can look it up,” Rees said in an interview. “There’s only about 9 billion hectares of ecologically productive land: forest, grassland, cropland, and so on. If there were a fair and equitable allocation… each human today would get about 1.5 hectares.”
But there is not a “fair and equitable allocation.” Each human in the industrialized world consumes the resources of 6-8 hectares. And experience shows that as technological efficiencies and standards of living increase, we tend to consume more, not less.
Thus the human footprint grows. And will continue to grow.
The world now has as many cellphones as people. Through their tiny screens, some 7 billion people under-privileged people are constantly exposed to images of life in the affluent world – huge houses, luxury cars, expensive gadgets, fancy clothing…
The billions who lack those benefits covet them.
Do the math. If by 2050, 9.73 billion people expect to enjoy our 6-8 hectare “ecological footprint,” we will have to expand the planet. Float fields on the oceans. Pursue lower standards of living..
Or drastically reduce human populations. (Which was, incidentally, the plot of Dan Brown’s novel Inferno – rendering one-third of all males sterile. He grasped the problem, even if his solution was scientifically ludicrous.)
But that’s an unthinkable, untouchable, unspeakable topic for world leaders at the Glasgow Conference.
Unless we can deal with endless increases in consumption, we can’t deal with climate change.
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Copyright © 2021 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
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Your turn
Ralph Milton tells me his book on aging has been selling well, at least in the Okanagan Valley. Several letters said you had either bought it, or ordered it.
Fran Ota is a living example of enjoying one’s “platinum years”: “I’m sitting in Gardermoen Oslo Airport, waiting for a flight to Bergen for a conference in medieval studies. And some sightseeing. I’m a Masters student in Medieval Norse Studies at University of Oslo, 75, which admittedly is not that old, but old enough. I live in a tiny apartment in Oslo in student housing. I love my kids and grandkids, but also want to give them an example of living to the fullest. I’m aware of my body’s issues, mostly arthritis. I don’t have the stamina I used to, but my brain functions still. I hope to be able to continue this way into my 80s at least. This is what makes life interesting.
Norma Poirier: “This week’s column seemed very personal for me! When I turned 80 I was shocked. I realized I was now one of those invisible people. I am not old in my head, but each morning when I look in the mirror I see my mother and it is a shock!
“My friends used to complain that I talked a lot but now I seem to speak so rarely since my friends are gone that I don’t recognize my voice -- or maybe it’s the darned hearing aids!”
Tom Watson heard a talk about scams aimed at seniors: “The largest amount of money scammed each year -- in excess of $7 billion -- is from romance scams. The next largest amount was just a bit over $2 billion. My first thought when I heard those figures was that there's a lot of loneliness out there. That thought is borne out by psychologist James Lynch's work from which he concludes that loneliness is an epidemic.
Ray Shaver is – I use this term carefully – an old friend: I just read your article on aging. Right on! I’m half way between 93 and 94. Yes, physically and in some respects mentally too, things don’t work as well as they used to, but I can’t complain. At least my partner and I have conquered loneliness as we get together twice every day, have dinner in her condo, etc. Then, just when I thought everything in my life was under some control (in June I had stepped down from three years as President of our condo Board of Directors), suddenly died. In a few days, this old guy will likely be catapulted back into the President’s chair! During the past three years, two of our condo board presidents have died ‘in the saddle.’ I now have to try, somehow, to prevent a third.
Helen Rattray (age 82 forwarded my column “to both my sisters (ages 90 and 86), my son, daughter in law, my nieces and nephews, and recommended Ralph Milton's book to them. There are perks to being over 80; one just has to search them out and learn to appreciate them.”
Isabel Gibson: “Years ago, my husband attended a retirement seminar at work. The speaker said there were three stages of retirement: go-go, go-slow, and no-go. That last seems to align with Ralph's ‘old-old’ category -- diapers or not!
“My mother used to get cranky when other nonagenarians commented negatively on the old-old stage -- she figured every stage had good points and challenges.”
Ruth Buzzard told me, “Don’t think of yourself as old-old. You’re fit and can go hiking. There’s nothing wrong with your mind if you can write twice-weekly columns and poetry.
“An Arizona acquaintance celebrated her 80th birthday by getting fit and losing a lot of weight. She started walking 10,000 steps every day and worked that up to 40,000 steps. She got physically fit very fast, lost lots of weight, found a boyfriend, and remarried at 82!
“I think that being old-old is a state of mind as well as a physical state. If you can find a project, something you really want to do -- physical, intellectual or spiritual -- and go for it, you can stay young despite waning physical ability.?
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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PROMOTION STUFF…
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)
ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE
The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns.