This week former vice president Al Gore testified to Congress regarding global warming, and among other things proposed a 90 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050.
Gore was ridiculed as being alarmist, but in my estimation he’s not alarmist enough. Global warming is only half the problem, since carbon dioxide footprint is only half of all consumption: our other pollution and destruction of habitats is easily as damaging. By my calculations, Gore’s recommendation would be a nearly two percent reduction in annual consumption, and if applied to the whole world would result in a delay of seven years for the crash of other species and a delay of 18 years in the crash of our population.
If a two percent reduction in consumption is “politically impossible” then our politics, like our present economy, is fundamentally unsustainable.
1 comment:
The revised model shows a delay of two years for species crash and 100 years for a human population crash.
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