A holistic approach to climate change?
There's a very important graphic for understanding climate change which you need to see in order to have a chance of understanding what a solution might look like.
On the left are the sources of Green House Gas emissions, sorted by sector. Energy is the biggest category, but land use change and agriculture is still very important.
On the right are different kinds of gasses produced. It may seem that CO2 is the biggest worry, but don't forget that Methane is as much as 30 times more potent at trapping heat than CO2.
Overall, GHG emissions are around 4 times higher than they were in the middle of last century.
Rises haven't been universal though. Some regions have seen bigger increases than others.
And some sectors have risen while others have fallen.
When we think of GHGs, we imagine most of it to come from our cars and from power stations generating energy for our homes. We've been told that we are the problem, and if we'd just drive less and turn off the lights, the problem would go away. Since it hard to do that, then we should just blame ourselves for failing to achieve it, right?
Road transport accounts for just 10% of global GHGs.
Even if we all stopped driving tomorrow, it would only return us to beginning of the century levels of emissions.
Residential buildings provide just 10% of emissions. If we all sat in dark, unheated homes for the rest of time, we would still make barely an impact on emissions.
So how do we deal with the problem?
Everything is connected. We can't just focus on one sector and say that it is the key to reducing emissions. Reducing all sectors by 20% would be the same as eliminating one whole sector. Reducing all sectors by 50% would be the same as getting rid of all emissions from transportation, electricity and heat generation.
We need a decentralized, holistic method which deals with changes across the spectrum. But at the same time, we need a local approach which applies most effort to the most problematic sectors in our locality. Where are the most wasteful sectors? What could be cut most easily? Where would carbon taxes and environmental subsidies be best applied?
Here's the US chart, to compare with the global one.
On the right are different kinds of gasses produced. It may seem that CO2 is the biggest worry, but don't forget that Methane is as much as 30 times more potent at trapping heat than CO2.
Overall, GHG emissions are around 4 times higher than they were in the middle of last century.
Even if we all stopped driving tomorrow, it would only return us to beginning of the century levels of emissions.
So how do we deal with the problem?
Everything is connected. We can't just focus on one sector and say that it is the key to reducing emissions. Reducing all sectors by 20% would be the same as eliminating one whole sector. Reducing all sectors by 50% would be the same as getting rid of all emissions from transportation, electricity and heat generation.
We need a decentralized, holistic method which deals with changes across the spectrum. But at the same time, we need a local approach which applies most effort to the most problematic sectors in our locality. Where are the most wasteful sectors? What could be cut most easily? Where would carbon taxes and environmental subsidies be best applied?
Here's the US chart, to compare with the global one.
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