[MCN] A hard truth about cutting demand for fossil fuels

[Lance Olsen]

“Make no mistake about it: This is a race. As a recent IPCC press release <https://www.ipcc.ch/2022/04/04/ipcc-ar6-wgiii-pressrelease/> notes, to limit global warming to around 1.5º C, greenhouse gas emissions would have to peak “before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by 43% by 2030.” 

Although carbon removal technology and trees will play a part, neither will get humanity remotely close in time. We’re logically left with one primary path: cutting the demand for fossil fuels.

“The hard truth about this path, a truth the Davos elite and most mainstream media seem reluctant to acknowledge, is that it will require personal sacrifices, especially from the world’s wealthiest people. On average, the top 1% of global earners – people who earn $130,000 a year or more <https://wir2022.wid.world/chapter-1/> – cause 110 metric tonnes of carbon emissions each year per person. For perspective, that’s about 2,200 times the carbon burden of a typical citizen of Burundi.


“The world’s 1-percenters out-polluted <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/worlds-richest-1-cause-double-co2-emissions-of-poorest-50-says-oxfam> the poorest half of humanity twice over between 1990 and 2015, and recent estimates suggest they are collectively responsible for more than 11 times the annual greenhouse gas emissions attributed to notorious climate villain ExxonMobil <https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/01/18/exxon-greenhouse-gas-net-zero/>. Meanwhile, the top 10% – which includes earners who make $39,100 a year, a middle class income for individuals in Global North countries like the US – produce nearly half of all carbon harms. No arithmetically coherent plan to cut carbon emissions can ignore this reality.”

https://science.thewire.in/environment/technofixes-elites-responsibility-climate-crisis/ <https://science.thewire.in/environment/technofixes-elites-responsibility-climate-crisis/>

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“… the serious meaning in a concept lies in the difference it will make to someone if it is true.”

William James (1842 –1910)
Pragmatism. Meridian Books, 1955
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“Research suggests that the scale of human population and the current pace of its growth contribute substantially to the loss of biological diversity. Although technological change and unequal consumption inextricably mingle with demographic impacts on the environment, the needs of all human beings—especially for food—imply that projected population growth will undermine protection of the natural world. 

"Numerous solutions have been proposed to boost food production while protecting biodiversity, but alone these proposals are unlikely to staunch biodiversity loss. An important approach to sustaining biodiversity and human well-being is through actions that can slow and eventually reverse population growth: investing in universal access to reproductive health services and contraceptive technologies, advancing women’s education, and achieving gender equality.”
 
Eileen Crist, Camilo Mora, Robert Engelman. The interaction of human population, food production, and biodiversity protection. Science 21 April 2017

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aal2011

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