Comments on: Why 350 is the most important number (and campaign?) on earth

By: Eclipse Now

Eclipse Now — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 12:59:22 +0000

Shakt, ‘Amazing Grace’ WAS Amazing, and the parallels to today’s environmental and economic arguments are astonishing. Does anything here sound familiar? (Just substitute either slaves for coal and see if it works).

“But slaves are too important economically, we’d be devastated.”

“How many businesses here depend on slaves?”

“What are we meant to do WITHOUT slaves? There’s no real alternative that can do the same job!”

“Slaves are THERE to be USED!”

“It’s our right to use slaves!”

“Maybe we could slowly ease out of using slaves, and stop using only 10% of them over the next decade to ease businesses off slaves…”

The reality is that businesses innovated after slaves were freed, economies adjusted, technologies evolved, some areas of the economy thrived while others went under, and the old cycle of the “destructive economy” of one dying industry being devoured by a younger, newer, more innovative industry continued.

One thing I would do (if I had the power) is guarantee every coal, gas, and oil worker a place in the wind, waves, and solar thermal and geothermal markets that are coming. Let’s get them from ‘hell’ underground up to more ‘heavenly’ above ground, clear sky renewable technologies.

By: shakt

shakt — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 05:07:08 +0000

I’d like to recommend the 2006/2007 movie ‘Amazing Grace’ about William WIlberforce whose campaign abolished slavery.. but only after years of effort and failure… lateral thinking saved the day.. inspirational for the climate movement, an apt metaphor for the climate movement. Video Ezy should have it.

By: Mike Ives

Mike Ives — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 02:54:35 +0000

Certainly this must be our ultimate goal Paul but as we are already way past the 350 parts per million CO2 mark this will come at a considerable cost and we need to figure out the most cost beneficial way and how to safely sequester the end product. Your reference to the US expenditure on WW2 efforts on ABC RN recently come to mind and we need to ask ourselves why we are not viewing this climate change issue as a ‘WW3’ scenario as similar monetary sacrifices will be required.
Certainly I for one have grave doubts in the success of the current studies in Australia and elsewhere being funded at billions of tax payer’s dollars to separate and extract CO2 from fossil fired power station flumes, cool, compress to super critical pressures, pump into voids in the ground then pray that Gaia will never again suffer from flatulence in the feint hope it will stay put indefinitely. I would be far more at ease if we were storing carbon or calcium carbonate.

Rough figures on cost in extracting CO2 from the atmosphere using say the Zeman & Lackner spay sodium hydroxide method (Environ. Sci. Technol., 2008, 42 (8), pp 2728–2735) look to be somewhere between US$1 and US$4 Trillion pa globally just to keep up with current discharges (not to mention the backlog of plus 350 ppm CO2 and methane currently escaping from the permafrost of Siberia)
Hence I feel expenditure 25% of US GDP or 10% of Global GDP pa is ball park annual outlay and not beyond credibility.

Yes Paul we do need Churchill’s fighting philosophy or perhaps a J F Kennedy’s ‘Man on the Moon’ commitment to stir us homo sapiens into action. Is there anyone out there?

By: Asher Miller

Asher Miller — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:56:35 +0000

Bill is traveling all around the world to support local activists and organizers to inspire days of action on October 24th, when the UN meets to discuss climate change. What’s also brilliant about 350 is that it works in just about every language.

best,

Asher

By: Oliver Scofield

Oliver Scofield — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:39:26 +0000

Dear Paul
Again thanks for taking me beyond current thinking. One element of these debates that frustrates me terribly (and that I would appreciate your take on) is the mainstream dialgoue on the ‘demographic timebomb. Now when you and I were simple young lads cvorting around Melboutne together we knew this timebomb to mean the impact of uncontrolle population growth. Now conventional wisdom tells us the opposite. I have been irritated by the analyis for ages but the recent Economist feature on the subject made me furious. Not once was there reference, not even a sardonic throw away line, to the good that might flow from a declining world population. Not once did they take into account the potential positive impact on the environment, potential corrections to the mutant food chain, on water supplies etc if/when the shrinkage of the human race really gains momentum. I understand the economic issues of aging populations but there are counter arguments to this that I never ever hear discussed including the incredible potential in realigning infrastructure as well as natural and human assets to smaller populations. Then I started to wonder who had a stake in not bringing the potential positives to the surface and I decided that it might be both the optimists and the naysayers. Perhaps all the current thinking has a vested interest in a paradigm that is based on unending growth because those are the arguments we are most comfortable with – a little like our reasons for us accepting the ‘wrong’ PPM figure because that is what we allowed to capture the debate. I’d be interested in your past or new thinking about the stupidiy of the current mainstream media’s musings on the demographic disaster we face (in terms of a decline in the human race).
Thanks as always
Oliver

By: Okolie, kevin

Okolie, kevin — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 14:16:38 +0000

Hi Paul.
This is a worthy campaign. 350 is the answer and I give you all my support.

By: Annalie Killian

Annalie Killian — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:36:13 +0000

Hi Paul, we corresponded before you went to Sweden re the AMPLIFY Innovation & Thought Leadership event that I curate. I’d like to invite you to participate in a Conversation Cafe at my organisaton in October to come and talk about the significance of 350. We will live tweet on Twitter and live blog it on the AMPLIFY website, audio-cast the talk, share the audio podcast on our blog and invite all attending employees with social media accounts to spread it to all their network, friends and family if they feel so inspired. I am with you- let’s do everything necessary….I’m here to help.

By: Bill

Bill — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 12:32:23 +0000

I agree 350 is important but so too is 2.1 – the amount of global hectares that each Australian has to produce the resources they need to survive and absorb their waste and – 7.7 – the actual number of hectares each Australian currently requires. We need to stop consuming stuff – including those things that directly or indirectly emit CO2.

By: Tim Bass

Tim Bass — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 12:29:29 +0000

Paul, What is your view of the nuclear energy option, currently in the news with Garrat’s approval of the new SA mine?

By: Gail

Gail — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:41:17 +0000

Thank you Paul. I have been hoping for a unified movement to develop, and soon, because all these fragmented efforts by individual scientists, bloggers, and ecological groups, praiseworthy though they are, aren’t enough to challenge the huge oil and gas lobbies. effectively. 350 is a simple concept and thus it is strong.