tgrant wrote:
Valiant effort...but should all CO2 consumption be treated the same? For example if a doctor is flying to Africa for Doctors without borders should that count against him? or the people he is helping? If politicians are flying to Ireland to (in theory) work towards reducing climate change, should that count against them?
If climate scientist are flying to the Antarctic to perform research on climate change and burning huge amounts of oil to keep their research facility livable would that count against them?
Ah-hah!
I think I've just worked out what the Problem is..!!!
Too many people think this an issue about *WHO TO BLAME* (for various forms of Environmental Degradation), rather than how Humanity can survive itself.
I'll explain:
Look at your flying African doctor example tG: "Should it count against him?"
I'm not really sure what you mean by that?
My perspective:
Human beings are collectively polluting the Planet, and we are being advised by those-who-know-about-these-things, that if Humanity keeps doing this, it will eventually drown in its own shit.
Fair enough. Even though I don't know about these things,that seems like a fairly common sense observation that you probably shouldn't need the combined weight of Humanity's Scientists to point out.
Next challenge then: what can be done about it?
Well, it seems again fairly clear from my perspective: we all need to reduce our individual contributions to pollution, whilst we wait for the Politicians to tell us what we should do Collectively.........
And what better way to visualise the work we need to do than to see how much pollution we are all creating individually?
I'd respond to a knee-jerk challenge like the one about the African Flying Doctor by saying that s/he isn't flying because he personally wants or needs to, but because her/his patients need it.
Therefore the CO2 generated won't go in his ledger, but in those of his patients. And since
per capita CO2 production is at it's lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa, we can probably make allowances.
But critically: we need to use CO2 metrics to measure how effectively we are addressing that particular (and emblematic) Environmental challenge.
We're not really in any position to play the Blame Game until we get the All Clear.
We just need to know what - if any - progress we are making in a way that is easy for everyone to grasp.
Per capita CO2 metrics provide that.
