Saving the World: Three Problems at a Time
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Saving the World: Three Problems at a Time
Three Problems - One SolutionTo say the least, the beginnings of the 21 century are interesting times. At the same moment humanity is at its' most abundant, most affluent, most technical, most knowledgeable we are rapidly undermining the very systems that have enable this incredible growth and change to occur.
Three fundamental problems present themselves as immediate threats, pollution of the earth's atmosphere and the corresponding rise in global temperatures, the peak of production of the worlds oil and gas facilities and the crisis in the world financial systems.
Each of the problems were identified decades earlier buy scientists, economists, futurists, environmentalists and others and many solutions were proposed. However key beliefs and values centred around infinite growth, sort terminism, greed, and laziness, and a general ignorance of the underlying processes that make our society function has resulted in not only a failure to implement these solutions or develop others but in fact a continual acceleration of these problems.
In fact it seems the human propensity to enjoy the good times while they are lasting and put off any action that might prevent worse times ahead will see us delay meaningful action until till the problems reach crisis points. The response to the current financial crisis is an example despite many foreseeing this problem years ahead.
The bad news is that these three problems, if tackled separately, are likely to result in compounding each other such as we see today with leaders contemplating options such as coal to oil, conversion of food to fuel, or building power hungry factories to convert seawater.
The good news is that there are solutions to each of these problems and that these solutions can be combined into a systemically coherent whole that will not only solves the three cores issue but numerous other problems of environmental and social sustainability that currently or will shortly plague humanity.
I have outlined lined some of the key issues for the three problem previously identified that need to be considered when developing a systemic solution.
In Climate change we are seeking primarily to address:Broader issues include social justice, the rights of other species to have space in this world, maintenance of ecosystem services, general pollution, material scarcity, maximising human potential and quality of life, sustainable politics and population.
The solutions are presented from a climate change perspective primarily focused on reducing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere but seeking to taken into account the above issues.
Initially the solutions are presented as broad goals but over time more detail will be added. They are developed using the following structure:
Though presented in sequence this approach does not represent a hierarchy nor a linear progression of activity;. Instead all elements of the solution should be worked on simultaneously, from energy efficincy to building a green power grid, from planning options or last resort to building a grass roots campaign. Developing each element of the solution, if done within a climate change context, helps advance the case for simultaneous action the others.
For the time being our ability to implement the large scale changes will be limited due to a lack of understanding of the problem by the braoder community and our poltical elites, however every implementation of a technology or modification of a system or value that heads down to path to the changes we need to make we make the acceleration of the process easier and faster once the critical mass of public and political support has been gathered
What we must avoid in the short term is significant investment in changes that are not part of the solutions. For example building a hybrid car plant is no longer part of the solution as it only reduces fuel consumption by 50%, instead producing a plug in hybrid plant which builds cars that run on batteries that can be charge on renewable power most of the time and flip to a sustainably grown bio fuel on rare occasions might be. Likewise replacing coal plants with new gas fired power stations that also use a finite CO2 producing fuel is not part of the solution. Instead the gas phase should be skipped and the money should be spent on renewable energy production instead.
Ultimately it is the objective of the target 300 campaign to promoted the change that is part of the solution to climate change and bring forward the time when we have the public and political support to make the large scale changes we need. See the campaign section for more information on how we plan to achieve this.
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