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slowfoxBack at Castle Fox, briefly, before heading out to the KC Stadium to watch Hull take on the might Portsmouth in a six-pointer this afternoon.
Back from, this morning, a UN conference on Climate Change being held at the Guildhall. John Prescott, croquet-playing former Deputy Prime Minister, was due to be speaking at 12, but we got a call at about that time from his car (one of the notorious two Jags, no doubt) to say that he was mired in traffic on the motorway (so, evidently, some fair way off), and necessitates meant that I had to leave before our most honoured guest arrived.
Dianne Johnson, my current constituency MP was there to show her face... quite literally, as far as I could tell, in that she arrived, sat down and read a couple of papers before, but by the time I next looked across, she'd vanished. Ah, but She Was There, and that's the important thing to note, of course.
As for the conference itself, well, there were maybe 40 personages drawn from this fine city present. Most were, I feel, waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too optimistic about human nature, and weren't willing to follow through the implications of what they were suggestion in terms of its impacts upon day to day life for us all.
I make no bones about this; with world population projected to hit 9bn people by mid-century, conventional oil production most likely having peaked in 2005, and the impact of increasing water stress across different areas of the globe, lifestyles are going to have to change drastically. Climate Change ups the challenge of feeding those 9bn people without the aid of petrochemical fertilisers and weedkillers, without the oil-driven mechanisation of industrial farming, struggling with the diminishing resources of fossil aquifers...
It's singularly ironic, methinks, that the 'greens' are constantly pilloried for wanting to sacrifice 'lifestyle' for the sake of the planet. From my perspective, that assessment is fundamentally flawed: the 'greens' are, for want of a better description, attempting to wrest what elements of a sustainable lifestyle can be wrung from the mess that's coming - it's naked self-interest for humanity's sake. Don't worry about Earth - we can pretty much do what we want, and it'll endure regardless.
But this fragile project of civilisation that we've got going here? That's something else.
On the bright side, True Blood S1 arrived in today's post :-P
Back from, this morning, a UN conference on Climate Change being held at the Guildhall. John Prescott, croquet-playing former Deputy Prime Minister, was due to be speaking at 12, but we got a call at about that time from his car (one of the notorious two Jags, no doubt) to say that he was mired in traffic on the motorway (so, evidently, some fair way off), and necessitates meant that I had to leave before our most honoured guest arrived.
Dianne Johnson, my current constituency MP was there to show her face... quite literally, as far as I could tell, in that she arrived, sat down and read a couple of papers before, but by the time I next looked across, she'd vanished. Ah, but She Was There, and that's the important thing to note, of course.
As for the conference itself, well, there were maybe 40 personages drawn from this fine city present. Most were, I feel, waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too optimistic about human nature, and weren't willing to follow through the implications of what they were suggestion in terms of its impacts upon day to day life for us all.
I make no bones about this; with world population projected to hit 9bn people by mid-century, conventional oil production most likely having peaked in 2005, and the impact of increasing water stress across different areas of the globe, lifestyles are going to have to change drastically. Climate Change ups the challenge of feeding those 9bn people without the aid of petrochemical fertilisers and weedkillers, without the oil-driven mechanisation of industrial farming, struggling with the diminishing resources of fossil aquifers...
It's singularly ironic, methinks, that the 'greens' are constantly pilloried for wanting to sacrifice 'lifestyle' for the sake of the planet. From my perspective, that assessment is fundamentally flawed: the 'greens' are, for want of a better description, attempting to wrest what elements of a sustainable lifestyle can be wrung from the mess that's coming - it's naked self-interest for humanity's sake. Don't worry about Earth - we can pretty much do what we want, and it'll endure regardless.
But this fragile project of civilisation that we've got going here? That's something else.
On the bright side, True Blood S1 arrived in today's post :-P
no subject
Date: 2009-10-25 10:27 pm (UTC)Yeah, I suppose "sustainable planet" would be better because, you're right - it's not like the core is going to implode if we die. If Earth survived 4.5 billion years and impacts which killed the dinosaurs and eruptions which blotted out the sun and killed off almost everything, then it will survive our blundering as well. What do you feel is humanity's projected longevity (in terms of years or generations) on our current course?
Still, the accusation of wanting to sacrifice lifestyle, etc etc reminds me of a TV ad I saw the other day, driving up fear regarding Summer '08's high petrol prices. It was, of course, funded by the petroleum industry. Sorry - I didn't LIKE the high prices, but I feel that's way more important (as is the conservation that people started doing when prices were high) than having low prices and running out that much faster. :P
no subject
Date: 2009-10-26 08:43 am (UTC)I have no clue - the American lifestyle, which we're told is non-negotiable by... was it Rumsfeld or Gingrich? ... anyway whoever, it's allegedly the one that sees 5% of the world's population consuming 25% of the world's resources. It should be clear that we can't support the entire world sustaining an American quality of life. But this is the image to which the vast majority of people would appear to aspire...
The fall of civilisation would take a loooooooooooooooooong time, and I reckon that humans are adaptable enough to still eke out an existence somehow, somewhen for eons yet.
It's somewhat ironic that the western civilisations that have contributed so much to the despoilment of the planet are also those best insulated, at least in the short/medium term from the consequences. And the climate is something of a juggernaut - it might only change relatively slowly, but it has huge momentum.
But what climate change and peak oil are really going to be about is food: agriculture is dependent upon settled, predictable weather patterns. Disturbances to that cause fluctuations in pollenator/parasite levels the ramifications of which are hard to predict, and as the scales keep sliding, the 'bankability' of harvests reduces commensurately. As global oil demand increases, yet production either plateaus or starts to fall off, the inevitable consequence is that the oil price increases... which means that the input costs of each step in the intensive agriculture system we currently use to feed the planet will also increase. And thus food gets more expensive.
I've now heard two figures for the calorific input/output for food. One says that we expend 10 calories of fossil fuel into agriculture for each calorie of food we get out. The other, taking a more global view of the entire chain (from soil to shrink wrapped plastic container bought from the supermarket, driven home to the freezer before being put in the microwave) says we expend 80 calories of energy for every calorie we get back. Any other animal that spent even 10 times the energy on the hunt that it got from the prey would soon be extinct.
That fate won't befall us, personally - we in the Western world have the immense reassurance that we'll look to feed ourselves before the 'less needy'. But as above, global population's set to reach 9bn by mid-century, and it's looking doubtful that existing setups will be able to feed them all.
The Chinese economy is apparently growing at 8% year on year. That means that in about 9 years' time, it's doubled in size. Even something as modest as 2% growth, year on year, means (through the magic of compound interest) that the economy would be double in size in 35 years, quadruple the size in 70 years, or a reasonably human lifespan. Quadruple the size would imply quadruple the energy inputs... that's scary.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-26 10:18 am (UTC)Thanks for your educated perspective. :)