Kilty Farts
COP OUT 26 was held recently in Scotland and the kilts were whirling with all the gaseous eruptions from various world leaders venting their sinuous calls to protect the planet from human induced climate change. The outcome of COP OUT 26 was increasing global temperature by nearly 2 degrees by 2050. This is not nearly good enough. It doesn’t sound like much but every miniscule increase is a vast increase in the amount of energy that the earth has to find ways to disperse.
The relief valve for Gaia will be more frequent and more intense storms, searing heat waves and droughts, cyclones and floods. This is the legacy that we will leave our children. Imagine the survivor generations living beneath the earth and foraging at night and you won’t be far off. As Australians we have absolutely nothing to be proud of when it comes to our mitigation strategy. We let SANTOS (the methane consortium) lead the way for Australia at COP OUT 26, a clear indicator of where our federal government is planning on taking us. The giant junkie called consumerism is hell bent on squirting fix upon fix of fossil fuels into it’s veins in an effort to convince itself that all is well and the future has a smile on its face. What an illusion!
The National Party is much to blame for holding back climate policy. The writing was on the wall many years ago and the Nats were busy having cocktails with their mates in the fossil fool sector. We have missed out on a transition strategy that could have placed Australia as a world leader in emissions reduction technology, instead, the Nationals threw spanner after spanner, then the whole tool box into the works. As a consequence, we now have our work cut out for us and there must be reductions in our quality of life. The more hard choices we impose on ourselves now, the less likely our grandchildren will suffer. The time to have our cake and eat it too is over, thanks to lousy politicians and rich, clever fossil fuel company lobbyists.
I have always been an advocate of starting with the things we have direct control over in our lives and working outward from there. If you are living out of town and have a flush toilet, you are personally contributing to the methane in the atmosphere. The septic tank vents this methane up a flu near your house and it adds to the concentration of methane in the atmosphere. Methane is the worst greenhouse gas. You could be capturing that carbon and storing it in the earth…yes that’s right carbon sequestration actually works when you have a compost loo.
If you are not thinking very carefully about all your choices when using fossil fuel, and that includes electricity, then you are part of the problem not the solution. Boil as much water as you need, not a full jug every time. Get a car with a smaller engine and set out your timeframe to transition to an electric vehicle. Limit your shopping trips to once every two weeks, learn to store food, preserve food. There are so many ways to make difference and as of right now it is really up to us to decide what our kids future will look like.
