Monbiot & Loeb on climate-change
High-lights aus:
George Monbiot in “Heat”:
„... self-enforced abstinence alone is a waste of time.“ (XIV)
“By and large, whatever our beliefs might be, we consume as much as our incomes allow.” (XV)
“The role of the government must be to exstablish the limits of action, but to guarantee the maximum of freedom within those limits.” (ibd.)
„Manmade global warming cannot be restrained unless we persuade the government to force us to change the way we live.“ (ibd.)
„The problem is compounded by the fact that the connection between cause and effect seems so improbable. By turning on the lights, filling the kettle, taking the schildren to school, driving to the shops, we are condemning other people to death. We never chose to do this. We do not see ourselves as killers. We perform these acts without passion or intent.” (22)
“professional denial industry has delayed effective action on climate change by several years.” (39)
“One of the reasons why the professional climate-change deniers have been so successful in penetrating the media is that the story they have to tell is one that people want to hear.” (40)
“contraction of the overall emission and convergence of per capita emission”:
“Rationing begins with a system about the amount of carbon the world can emit every year. (…) in 2012 the world should be producing no more than 5.5 billion tonnes [today: 7 bio. Tonnes, emissions must be reduced to 2.7 by 2030]. We divide that figure by the number of the people we will expect to find on earth in 2012, and discover how much carbon everyone would be entitled to emit [around 0.8tonnes]. (…) even in 2030, Ethiopia, if its population remained stable, could emit five and a half times as much as it does today.” (44)
Znet-commentary, 01/22/07
A storm of denial
Paul Rogat Loeb
http://www.zmag.org
„It's hard for any of us to step back and confront the depth of the challenge this poses. It's easier to close our eyes to the issue, as if we're children banishing monsters from beneath our bed. It's easier to hope someone else will solve it. Many of us also find it hard to act because we doubt we'll have an impact. The issue is so vast, so global, that anything we might do seems insignificant in comparison, just spitting in the ocean. The picture gets more daunting still as developments like melting Arctic permafrost release still more greenhouse gases into the air. It's easy to just go about our familiar routines Add in a war-obsessed president and the way the media-drumbeat of Exxon-funded global warming deniers, and no wonder so many of us wait and do nothing. “
“But we have to view our actions as being magnified, for good and ill, by the choices of other individuals in our communities, our nation, and the planet. Global warming can't be solved through individual actions alone, but individual choices will inevitably play a part, not the least by pioneering critical alternatives.”
“But we still need to move from a general sentiment to action.”