{"id":6813,"date":"2016-11-08T07:21:30","date_gmt":"2016-11-08T07:21:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6813"},"modified":"2016-11-08T07:21:30","modified_gmt":"2016-11-08T07:21:30","slug":"so-what-should-we-do-about-this-sad-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2016\/11\/08\/so-what-should-we-do-about-this-sad-story\/","title":{"rendered":"So what should we do about this sad story?\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here<\/a> is Jorgan Randers on what to do about the environmental crisis we are in. \u00a0The pdf\u00a0is adapted from his 2012\u00a0lecture in the 10th Annual Distinguished Lecture Series in Sustainable Development, hosted by the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership and the Centre for Sustainable Development in the Department of Engineering. \u00a0It's based on his most recent book, 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years<\/em> (2012). \u00a0All figures in this article are extracts from the book, and the data is also available at www.2052.info<\/p>\n

First,<\/p>\n

have fewer children, and that\u2019s particularly important when you\u2019re rich. I\u2019ll repeat this: my daughter, who is 29 and Norwegian, is the most dangerous animal on the surface of the Earth. She consumes between 10\u201330 times as many resources and generates 10\u201330 times as much pollution as an Indian child. So, it\u2019s much more important to have one less rich kid than it is to have 10\u201330 fewer Indians. I\u2019m serious. Population control in the rich world should be the prime focus.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Secondly,<\/p>\n

reduce your CO2 footprint. Don\u2019t drive big cars, don\u2019t drive them so far, don\u2019t fly so long, and insulate your home. \u00a0Actual per capita disposable income in the US is already at its peak\u2026 partly because the US economy is the world\u2019s most mature, partly because of huge debt, and partly because of the inability of the US government to make forceful decisions on any issue involving the redistribution of income and wealth. \u00a0You might ask, why can\u2019t we get cheap things from those other places that are still poor in 2052? We could, if we managed to engineer economic development in those countries; but I don\u2019t think we will.15<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Third,<\/p>\n

support strong government. As mentioned above, most of the solutions to today\u2019s global problems exist, and the only reason they\u2019re not implemented is that we don\u2019t have strong government. Or to be exact, we don\u2019t have support for strong government. Thus civilised, solution-oriented citizens ought to be in favour of collective action. I think we will see 40 years down the line that it was the Chinese who did, in the end, solve the climate problem for us \u2013 through collective action. They will produce the electric cars and the technologies we will need, and they will implement them in China through centralised decisions. Meanwhile, we will be fiddling around with half-baked quota systems that provide insufficient incentives \u2013 which might modify development somewhat, but doesn\u2019t solve the problem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And then, fourth and finally,<\/p>\n

if we want to help the world\u2019s poor, we (the rich) should build and pay for a complete clean energy infrastructure in the poor world. This would ensure that they don\u2019t have to build a cheaper, carbon-intensive energy system for the energy they sorely need: electricity, fuel and heat. If we did nothing else, that would solve a substantial part of the future climate and poverty problem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He concluded: \"That, my friends, is what I see. \u00a0I don\u2019t like it... but still, feel free to shoot the messenger.\"<\/p>\n

All good seminar fodder.<\/p>\n

I met and talked with Randers a few times when he was at WWF International, and I was, with John Fien, involved in that epic evaluation of WWF's\u00a0global education programme. \u00a0I recall good conversations, but cannot remember if he was as gloomy as this back then. \u00a0maybe not as the skies have gotten darker over those intervening 15 years.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is Jorgan Randers on what to do about the environmental crisis we are in. \u00a0The pdf\u00a0is adapted from his 2012\u00a0lecture in the 10th Annual Distinguished Lecture Series in Sustainable Development, hosted by the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-talks-and-presentations"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}