Big move for President Bush as he signs a climate change agreement to establishing higher fuel-economy standards for new cars, also promoting a push for ethanol. Bush described the move as “a major step toward energy independence and easing global warming”. At Suburban Chimp we believe it is a step in the right direction, even if it comes to the table late in the game.

With the Bali talks on setting climate change targets out of the way, I am quite happy to state I think that the whole process was a complete waste of time and effort as the culmination appeared to be that all the countries, (after much argument) managed to agree that they would agree to set targets for climate change, which means nothing basically and has achieved absolutely nothing, except fill up a few government representatives with good food and wine.

I have written a few flippant articles lately and have wondered about some of the content of them in great depth. The article which caused the most anxiety and perhaps the most thought was the one related to ‘Peak Oil’. I found a web-page which offered a gloomy if not horrific outlook for the future which culminated with a list of things you could do to ‘prepare’ for the worst. If we are truly going to run out of oil in the future then the prospect of this can barely be thought about as nobody seems to have prepared for the worst, and a world without any oil surely will be reverting us to (I quote from a more intelligence source) a post industrial stone age. When you think about the fact that there will be no oil, and that oil is pretty much the driving force in all that we do, we are faced with a few facts, generally which can be summed up as we’re pretty much screwed, we do not pass go, we do not collect £200 and have absolutely no future what-so-ever.
When you think about the drive towards nuclear power, GM crops, the illegal war in Iraq in terms of an oil crisis then things start to make a little more sense. Whatever I write here today will have little effect on any outcome that may happen. I cannot ‘fix’, ‘solve’ or do anything to resolve the terrifying events that are going to unfold within the next 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 years. Yeah, there is uncertainty when this is actually going to happen, we just don’t know. I have even started to wonder whether the sceptics who dismiss climate change may be correct and all the measures about sustainability, recycling, clean power, is just a masquerade, masking the true underlying cause as to why we need to ‘do’ something. When you realise that governments continuously cynically lie, cheat and play a game of smoke and mirrors then you can be sure when they say that they are making changes to benefit the ‘environment’ then there is either money or something more important at stake. Personally, no matter how cynical you are (like governments) or whether you believe in peak oil or not, or climate change or not something certainly seems to be amiss with society in general. Where are we going? What is this odd obsession with celebrities and consumerism we have all embraced all about?
I like to think of the worst-case scenario. Worst case is the fruititon of all the things scientist say might happen. We know that the oil is running out at some point. Nobody seems concerned. The mainstream press do not seem to care. Honestly just think of what is going to happen when the oil runs out. Just think. I know it is becoming increasingly difficult to ‘think’ and ‘create’ but just try to imagine, the more open individuals out there can do this easily, I am not going to spell it out to you if you don’t really get the idea of a world without oil, there are no alternatives to fall back on. Now consider that climate change is actually a real thing, and what the implications are for this, Melted ice caps, a rise in the sea levels, countries (say goodbye to the Dutch) submerged under water, wild weather, storms, hurricanes, and more. Consider the ‘conveyor belt’ in the ocean. That’s another article, the long and the short of that is if it is impacted by climate change (which it will be) the UK and the northern hemisphere will be plunged into tundra. Of course we also have perpetually increasing population mass to content with also, which in itself is a challenge most horrid. Combine these events and this century certainly has a few ‘issues’ it will have to deal with, and I for one do not believe we are capable of resolving them. I know I sound like a lunatic, but the evidence is out there if you just look for it.
Ian Dury is unfortunately dead, but before he died he used to sing that he had reasons to be cheerful. If he were alive today I believe that he would think the same thing, and I also have reasons to be cheerful even considering the facts above. I believe my generation, and the next couple of generations are in for a hard time. Human existence is in for a torrid ride and there are some big questions that are going to need to be answered and things are never going to be quite the same again. I can foresee tens of millions of people around the globe dying of starvation, I can see the complete degrade of first world society, where capital cities become no go zones, plunged into violent darkness due to the lack of electricity across the entire world, I can see I time when shops won’t be filled with MP3 players and digital photo-frames as there won’t even be any food to be bought, I can see the breakdown of sanitation services and running water, and I’m not talking about poor African countries, I am talking about the ‘developed world’, the UK and the US and the whole of Europe which will implode without the glorious black oil. Where will we be then? And I say we still have reasons to be cheerful, and I mean it, because the world is a resilient entity, eventually it can heal itself from ‘climate change’ and humanity is equally resilient, and 95% of the people may die out, but if there is one characteristic that humans have it is one of survival. I believe that humans may also learn from their mistakes and we will not adopt a money led society again, we will take on board the lessons of living an economical lifestyle, with ‘eco’ values of recycling, of not wasting things and never taking anything for granted. That may not be in my lifetime, or your lifetime, but it could be in your children’s lifetime so I will continue to spout nonsense on my little eco blog, giving advice on how best to live our lives, whilst offering up some outlandish doom mongering in the process. Maybe the oil will last another few hundred years, maybe climate change is a tale to scare children, maybe nothing will happen at all and I should have just bought a nice 4×4 and be done with it. Ah well, time will tell.

Talks are in place to ratify a replacement to the Kyoto Agreement which is set to expire in 2012. So far, Kyoto for the most part has proven to be a load of hot air, with big players such as Australia and the US refusing to sign up to the agreement at all. Australia have now stepped in line, but it’s hard to believe that the Bush administration will ever sign up to Kyoto, so we await with baited breath to see if the American electorate push for a president who is forward thinking but lets be honest there is very little hope of that, so we sit here in Europe trying to reduce our little (in comparison) carbon footprints, whilst the US charge about with their size fifteens trampling all the pretty flowers…

I’ve been trying to decipher a puzzle that was posed by numerous websites stating that burning logs on a wood burning stove is actually good for the environment, because it is carbon neutral. This is widely acknowledged across the Web, but something about it seemed wrong to me. Further investigation found a site which pretty much dismissed that statement as being wrong. This led me to the conclusion that basically burning ‘deadwood’ would be a pretty environmentally sound activity, but if we all did it there wouldn’t be enough trees to go around. Simply put, nothing is environmentally sound because there are too many people on the planet. Instead of addressing climate change, and any other eco issue that is out there, I think we’re skirting around the real issue, which is we need to look at ways of reducing population growth because no matter how eco-friendly we all become there are just too many of us for the world to support. Up until we do this, at best we’re just treading water.

Sometimes you just feel that there is little point in even hoping that the human race will be able to run the planet economically without using up all the earth’s resources and turning it to a polluted hell hole. I figured that I could turn the following headlines into various posts and expand on them further, but I can barely be bothered today.

News on the wire is that the US Environmental Agency report that ‘BP PLC violated the Clean Air Act by making several unapproved changes at its Indiana oil refinery, significantly boosting emissions.’ Well that’s just great…

A plethora of reports in this week’s New Scientist (go buy it!) highlighting problems with the Kyoto, draining bogs in Sumatra to grow palm oil for bio-fuel releases carbon dioxide into the environment, up to 30 percent of what could be saved by the bio fuel in the first place. What great economy that is! Honestly if these people would engage their brains instead of their greed just for a second maybe just maybe…

What else? New Scientist again, this time highlighting another silly nuclear power station being built in Bulgaria, experimental blah, blah, blah, on a fault line??? Yeah, I have a nice little paragraph from the Bible which is quite apt (I’m not religious so don’t get any ideas) for all of you who think building this nuclear power plant is a good idea:

And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter. (translate Wormwood loosely into Ukrainian, if you’re bored)

And I don’t mean that God warned us, I mean that we’ve been warned through coincidence, history and what should be common sense.

Fair dinkum mate, Australia’s new PM Kevin Rudd has stated that he’s going to make climate change a priority and to sign the Kyoto protocol. It will be interesting to see if he keeps his initial promises. Simply signing up to Kyoto will not really achieve anything in the short term, it’s a complicated situation, but never the less, agreeing to sign up to it is a step in the right direction.

Kyoto

Think about a sponge, you know, one of those creatures yanked out of the sea so you can wash yourself with, forget flannels, sponges are the way to go… anyway, think of a ‘sponge’ and if you are able, imaging how it can soak up water, and then some. It soaks up a load of water and then it’s full and can’t hold any more water. Then what happens? Water spills everywhere and there’s a mess to clean up.

The world is like a sponge, we pour a load of stuff into it and it’s filling up faster than we can squeeze it out again. This is a simple analogy for stupid people who believe that the issue of ‘climate change’ is make believe, made up like elves.

Whilst we busily filling the world up with bad stuff, (lets keep it simple), we’re also filling up the world with people. From what I’ve read- too many people. I could quote sources, but you can type ‘over population’ or ‘population growth’ into a search engine and find it for yourself. I’m not a journalist, or anything else, so I don’t feel I need to back up my opinion with any solid facts whatsoever, because I know the facts are there.

Let us recap:

The world is like a sponge and it is being filled up to saturation point. This is called ‘global warming’, ‘climate change’ or ‘make believe’ depending how you see things.

The world is full of people and there are going to be a whole bunch more of them by the year 2050.

The reason this is spelled out simply is because there is a whole bunch of people out there who do not believe these ‘facts’ are true.

Anyway, although I am passionately interested in the environment and social issues, any of this stuff I’m banging on about, frankly doesn’t matter for me because by 2050 I’ll be more than likely dead. I’m not having children, I have no brothers or sisters to worry about, I don’t really have many ties at all, apart from my wife who will be as aged as me by then, so really saving the world provides me with no actual benefit at all, and in millions of years time the world will be consumed by the sun anyhow, so maybe none of us should care less…

With those thoughts in mind, all those parents out there, make sure you all buy a Chelsea Tractor, show your kids what they look like while the is still enough oil to fuel them… say to them, look (insert name), this is what helped kill our planet, so when you’re choking to death from fumes and climate change, in middle age, you can blame good old dad for his devotion to pollutant vehicles and excess consumerism.