Re: [pf] Global Warming cluelessness of everyone

At 11:56 26/03/00 -0800, Diane Wills wrote:
>I wanted to post this question to the list (I'm assuming everyone on 
>this list sees global warming for the urgent issue it is and understand 
>that the root cause is our consumer culture); ... People are just 
>clueless about global warming and overconsumption. ...  I 
>often feel as if I'm the only one in the world who cares about global 
>warming (I know there are other like-minded people on this list but you 
>are all over the country and I don't see you every day).  I am 
>especially alarmed with global warming because we are going to see major 
>damage from it in the next 40 years, and things are going to continue to 
>get worse and worse.  I'm just amazed that the public isn't outraged by 
>this and demanding that the government do something about it to stop the 
>damage.  Educated people are especially clueless and are the worst 
>consumers ...
>I am finding it very difficult to be "enlightened to the truth" and 
>getting more and more aware through reading Yes! magazine and other 
>books like Bill McKibben's and Paul Hawken's, and be in a world that 
>is absolutely clueless about this stuff.  
>
>Does anyone else relate to this?
>
>
**  You're right that global warming and the devastation that will result,
are the actual big issue, though the consequences of our continued wasting
of our water resources is going to be the environmental issue that gets
into the news during the next ~10 years, I think.

**  Emphasising "wasteful consumption" in talking to people, letters (e.g.
to the editor etc.) and so on, is IMO the way to go; I don't see government
doing anything substantial about it. That phrase should get them started
thinking about their own decisions.

**  Before you came back, Diane, I sent a post (elsewhere) about a model
showing the amount of change needed to restrict the CO2 concentration to
450 ppm (it was under 300 ppm - .03% - when I was first learning about the
constituents of the atmosphere, in the early 1950s).

**  Below is what I sent to a New Zealand list earlier this month.
    I recommend you download the  .pdf  with its scripting, that allows you
to alter the model as you want. It's at:
http://www.gci.org.uk/images/C&C&Prod.pdf
    from The Global Commons Institute (42 Windsor Rd, London NW2 505).

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Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 14:59:35 +1300
From: David MacClement <davd@ihug.co.nz>
Subject: [GV]Re:Conventional Oil Depletion & Global Climate Policy

At 11:15 8/03/00 +1300, Paul Bruce sent-on Aubrey Meyer's:

>CONVENTIONAL OIL DEPLETION & GLOBAL CLIMATE POLICY
>An informative and data-rich downloadable colour graphic image is 
>available from:        - 
http://www.gci.org.uk/images/C&C&Prod.pdf
>
>It shows: -
>(a) a _history_ of all-country fossil fuel production and consumption 
>1800 - 2000. The consumption data comes from CDIAC and the production 
>data comes from industry sources; all is expressed in 
>gigatonnes carbon content. 
>(b) a _scenario_ of all-country fossil fuel production and 
>consumption 2000 - 2200. The consumption data is generated from 
>GCI's CC Options model expressed in gigatonnes carbon content and 
>the production data is as follows.
>
>The 'scenario' projects a global carbon consumption/production contraction 
>budget with a total consistent with IPCC's stabilisation of atmospheric 
>CO2 concentration at 450 ppmv (CO2 only) by around 2100. Consumption 
>shares 
>coverge to international equality per capita by 2030, which is then the 
>(UN 
>medium fertility) population base year, in this image. ...


**  For those who can't or won't get the free  .pdf  reader from Adobe, or
don't want to do a 1 MB download, I've put a rough and enlarged copy of the
upper (consumer/nation) part of that /very/ interesting document on my
Australian site, at:

http://www.emucities.com.au/member/davd/Consumer_ClimateChange.html
    If that doesn't work try my:
http://members.tripod.com/~davd/Consumer_ClimateChange.html#top


**  It shows a GIF image at ~300% magnification (120 kB), i.e. you don't
have the option of zooming in to e.g. see the labels as you would with the
original C&C&Prod.pdf, so only the larger labels (e.g. China) are visible. 

**  Any problems, please let me know.

David.
(David MacClement) davd@ihug.co.nz 
www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/3142/Pg1-AD11.html
 or better: http://www.emucities.com.au/member/davd/
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