yassam

> ...without winding in a decarbonisation scheme that doesn't actually do anything

I take issue with this. Australia's contribution to GHG emissions does contribute to warming. Even if it's only 1.3% (greater if you take exports into account [0]) it has an effect.

Also, more than 20% of global emissions are emitted by countries with lower overall emissions than us [1]. If they all used our excuse [2], do you think that would be acceptable?

We also have among the highest per capita emissions in the world [3].

And I haven't even talked about historic cumulative emissions, which have to be taken into account for an equitable solution.

Australia is already suffering from the effects of a climate emergency, with conditions predicted to get orders of magnitude worse this century. We should be taking a lead in the decarbonisation effort so we can urge the rest of the world to do the same, for our sakes, as well as theirs.

Instead, our government sabotaged negotiations at COP25 [4], and is acting for the short-term benefit of a few fossil fuel miners, even to the point of wanting to make secondary boycotts illegal [5]. They are criminally negligent at best, and an absolute disgrace.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/08/fossil-f... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous... [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-01/australia-called-a-fr... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... [4] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-16/australia-climate-car... [5] https://reneweconomy.com.au/morrisons-crackdown-on-climate-p...

Good analysis.

I've recently been reading The Australian online, and any time there's a climate related article, there are literally 100s of comments almost all of which are rabid climate deniers. It's stomach churning to read.

No idea how representative of general population, but my gut-feeling is that it's a significant minority, e.g. 10-20%.

As an Australian resident and now citizen for 20 years, I've been pretty angry since that last federal election. So many people here are still denying man-made global warming, and that includes our own government, which stood in the way of progress at COP25 [1].

Even now, in the midst of unprecedented heat, drought and fire that has gripped this continent for months, if not years, "friends" of mine regularly post the most ignorant climate denialist BS on FB.

[1] https://reneweconomy.com.au/cop25-talks-labelled-lost-opport...

Hundreds, possibly thousands of deaths, are predicted from smoke inhalation:

https://insidestory.org.au/slow-burn/

ZX81 was my first machine. Got me hooked on coding at 11, and I'm still coding full time for a living 36 years later.

I learnt the most important aspects of programming on the ZX81 with nothing more than 1k RAM, a small B&W CRT TV and a tape recorder.

Get involved in grassroots politics, e.g. https://350.org/

Personal action (such as reducing your own CO2 emissions) is good but not enough. Collective action to put pressure on governments to regulate CO2 emissions is what's needed.

We already have the tech to reduce emissions to safe levels. What we lack is the political will to use it.

The reason I mentioned the super rich of the past, is that they had enough money to buy whatever was available. Most other people couldn't afford to buy much at all, I imagine.

So the question is, were the super rich then as acquisitive as we are today? Were there rooms in their mansions filled with pointless things? Or were they surprisingly spartan by the standards of today?

I'm trying to figure out whether our insatiable appetite for more and more stuff is a modern thing, or whether it's always been there. And if it is largely a modern thing, what caused it? Non-stop advertising?

Your point about amassing wealth in the form of jewels etc. is a good one.

I wonder to what extent a lifetime of exposure to advertising contributes to our craving for stuff. The article claims an evolutionary psychological explanation: anyone know of any research to back that up? Our ancestors were nomadic, so acquiring a lot of stuff wouldn't have made sense, would it?

I wonder whether the super rich of the 17-century wanted to acquire stuff as much as we do. They would have had the means to buy a lot, but would not have been exposed to as much marketing as us. I concede there would have been a lot less stuff to buy then.

I agree (about climate) and I don't think we can wait for peak oil to hit before we start making much deeper cuts in emissions.

Bill McKibben in Rolling Stone shows that proven fossil fuel reserves are around 5 times higher than we can burn to avoid a very dangerous climate change (beyond the 2C guardrail):

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-te...

More info here: http://math.350.org/

This article is critiqued at RealClimate:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/04/climat...