Live Earth - Sounds All Too Familiar
So apparently there was a concert to save the world. Dozens of international artists promoting themselves doing their bit to help end global warming. What a great idea, after all, there is no longer any poverty in Africa, famine has all but been eliminated and third world debt is a thing of the past. What’s that? We still have all those things? But didn’t we have world wide concerts to fight those things as well?
Raising awareness of a problem may be the first step in helping to fix that problem and it might make everyone feel good about themselves to say they support an issue and to show that support but the bottom line is that more is needed to actually “make a difference”. The bottom line when it comes to climate change is the world’s reliance on fossil fuels.
The modern, industrialized countries of the world can no doubt do more to minimize their use of fossil fuels. Car engines are becoming cleaner, coal fired power stations are likewise becoming cleaner. People can be encouraged to catch public transport instead of driving their cars to work.
In my opinion these measures, and others like them, will not be enough. Any savings made in greenhouse gas emissions as a result of the raising of awareness through the efforts of rock stars and former Vice-Presidents will be more than offset by the emergence of the new industrial powers of China and India. Let me offer an example to support this. The Indian city of Mumbai relies heavily on its rail network to move millions of people around the city every day. This rail network is struggling to cope with the ever increasing numbers of passengers. Trains are filled to over-flowing and the network has reached its capacity. The city’s answer to this dilemma is to build massive roads to encourage enable more people to use cars to navigate the city. I don’t raise this example to be critical of this strategy and I don’t think anyone in a motor vehicle dominated society can be critical of such a move. It does raise serious questions about the future as this scenario is repeated in other developing areas.
The question therefore is what can be done and where does the responsibility rest. The answer is obviously the development of alternative energy sources to fossil fuels. Without these viable alternatives the steps being taken to encourage people to minimize fossil fuel usage are doomed to failure. The responsibility rests primarily with wealthy industrialized countries. This work will be expensive but the potential rewards are also huge. Unfortunately there is so much wealth and power tied into the oil and coal industries that the required level of investment in alternative energy sources is just not taking place.
Here are some specific ideas to get things started:
- Donate all the funds raised from several “save the world” type events to research into sustainable energy
- Scrap all space exploration until viable alternatives to fossil fuels are developed and channel the money saved into that research
- Offer free, nothing to pay, university places to young people in areas that study and develop alternative energy sources
- Once the best alternative energy strategies are developed, offer substantial tax breaks to companies that bring them to market and compete directly with the major players in the oil industry - electric car anyone?
There is already enough encouraging work being done in the area of wind turbines for homes, electric cars, and even wave-powered turbines to suggest that there is a future without fossil fuels. We just need to get there sooner rather than later.
