Oh Kyoto
I hate to say it, but I can't help kinda agreeing with the line being taken by the Big Oil interests over climate change.
Kyoto-style policies will only shift carbon emissions to other parts of the world, as developing countries snap up the oil and make hay while the sun shines. And in the end, we're going to need new technologies - whether they come in the form of solar panels on rooftops or cars that run on sea water.
The problem with carbon counting is that it doesn't really work - as the likes of Jeremy Clarkson are fond of pointing out. Just because you don't have carbon dioxide coming out of the exhaust pipe of an electric car doesn't mean that loads of carbon dioxide wasn't produced in the generation of the electricity used to charge the battery.
And the battery itself: how was that produced? How much energy goes into the production of solar panels? Even as this government continues to hassle motorists (the easy target), they're embarking on an ambitious housebuilding programme: concrete production being one of the main offenders in CO2 production.
Bush may be against Kyoto style agreements for the wrong reasons (and his recent trumpeting of what he called "bio-diessel" [sic] shows how little he understands the issue - he thinks its about running out of oil), but it's true that if there's a link between human activity and climate change, then the reverse of that process will take over 100 years to achieve.
in other words, as far as this and many future generations are concerned, it's a permanent state of affairs, and we need a permanent solution in the form of new technologies (think cold fusion, anti-gravity, that kind of thing).
Kyoto-style policies will only shift carbon emissions to other parts of the world, as developing countries snap up the oil and make hay while the sun shines. And in the end, we're going to need new technologies - whether they come in the form of solar panels on rooftops or cars that run on sea water.
The problem with carbon counting is that it doesn't really work - as the likes of Jeremy Clarkson are fond of pointing out. Just because you don't have carbon dioxide coming out of the exhaust pipe of an electric car doesn't mean that loads of carbon dioxide wasn't produced in the generation of the electricity used to charge the battery.
And the battery itself: how was that produced? How much energy goes into the production of solar panels? Even as this government continues to hassle motorists (the easy target), they're embarking on an ambitious housebuilding programme: concrete production being one of the main offenders in CO2 production.
Bush may be against Kyoto style agreements for the wrong reasons (and his recent trumpeting of what he called "bio-diessel" [sic] shows how little he understands the issue - he thinks its about running out of oil), but it's true that if there's a link between human activity and climate change, then the reverse of that process will take over 100 years to achieve.
in other words, as far as this and many future generations are concerned, it's a permanent state of affairs, and we need a permanent solution in the form of new technologies (think cold fusion, anti-gravity, that kind of thing).
posted by Anonymous at
Monday, July 04, 2005
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home