Resources and Consequences

Following on from yesterday’s post about Global Warming, Claire commented

Yes, the planet will happily survive, but are you implying that we shouldn’t be going out of our way to prevent the millions of deaths that will be caused by Climate Change in the very near future?

And to be honest, I don’t know.

On my more cynical days, I wonder whether Climate Change isn’t just another case of Darwinism and/or that Gaia hypothesis. We’re working so hard to save everyone, but does the planet have enough resources to support all the people that are saved? And if we don’t have the resources in the first place, what’s the answer?

As an example, one of Comic Relief’s big aims this year was about tackling malaria. According to Comic Relief, Malaria kills a child every 30 seconds – so the money raised for this project was primarily aimed at providing mosquito nets, and thus stopping those children from being infected in the first place. But for all those people who now survive, rather than die of malaria (or other disease of choice) will they take up extra resources? Will we see Uganda (and Africa in general) in droughts and famines in ten years time because there are so many extra mouths to feed than there used to be?

If Climate Change and Global Warming are going to be as world-changing as they’re purported to be, planetary resources are going to be reduced from their current levels anyway. So how will we plan on feeding/watering/housing everyone?

I don’t know the answers – I don’t even pretend to know the answers – and this is just shit I think about on cynical days.

Global Warming

The Copenhagen UN Climate Change Conference starts today, with delegates from 192 countries and leaders of 100 countries planning to attend.

The irony that none of the media seems to be mentioning is that the massive majority of those delegates and leaders will be flying in – thus contributing to the carbon emissions they’re all purportedly wanting to cut. Oops.

The thing that annoys me about the entire “Global warming” thing is this – whatever we do, the planet will survive. Saying that we’re going to destroy the planet is – to be blunt – simply egotistical bullshit. Even a nuclear war wouldn’t destroy the planet. What people actually mean when they talk about global warming is “we might wipe ourselves off the face of the planet”. And that’s a bit different to the overly-emotive “destroy the planet”.

Higher temperatures and higher levels of CO² etc. will have an effect, certainly. And it might damage or destroy “civilisation as we know it”. But those things will really just create different environments, and different ecospheres that evolution will deal with if technology doesn’t. The planet won’t die – but it will change, as it has done for billions of years previously. (The Gaia Hypothesis is one interesting theory on this)

Yes, we might end up with a new Desert Age. It might swing back to a new Ice Age. It might do one and then the other. But it won’t destroy the planet.

Even in all these changes, the odds are that humanity won’t be wiped out. (unless it all becomes an event similar to that/those which killed off the Dinosaurs – yet another example of “this stuff has happened before”) It’ll be reduced, almost certainly – but I suspect there’d still be pockets of humanity going through, restarting, evolving, and dealing with new living conditions and environments.

Even if we were to go to entirely sustainable ‘green energy, we don’t know what the long-term effects would be. We don’t know what happens if – for example – we pull energy from the sea (wave turbines/power). That energy isn’t magicked out of nothing – there are systems that exist, and we simply don’t know what long-term effect any of our supposedly green plans might have.

This doesn’t mean I think we should all leave lights on all the time and consume as much power as possible – but equally I don’t think we should worry about it as much as politicians think we should.  Sure, things will change – but the oil supply is likely to run out well before the greenhouse effect or global warming get us. At that point, who knows? We might have stretched our way to using nuclear power (which I personally think is still the only real alternative to oil/carbon-based energy) but somehow I doubt it – the politicians will biffle on about global warming and reducing carbon emissions without actually doing anything that’ll replace the things that generate those carbon emissions.