'Every little helps' is a dangerous mantra for climate change

Adam Corner in the Guardian (UK): ...Like recycling, re-using carrier bags has become something of an iconic "sustainable behaviour". But whatever else its benefits may be, it is not, in itself, an especially good way of cutting carbon. Like all simple and painless behavioural changes, its value hangs on whether it acts as a catalyst for other, more impactful, activities or support for political changes.

...To be clear: fewer plastic bags would be a small, good thing. But as a major two-day conference at the Royal Society headquarters in London this week made clear, "every little helps" is a dangerously misleading mantra when it comes to climate change.

The Radical Plan meeting featured contributions from across the physical and social sciences, as well as civil society. The organisers – Professors Kevin Anderson and Corinne Le Quere of the Tyndall Centre – posed contributors a brutally simple question: what would need to happen if we were to do more than simply pay lip service to the idea of avoiding dangerous climate change?

...Scientists and engineers described the unprecedented scale of energy system change necessary to decarbonise rapidly. Social scientists argued for a transformation in the way we view ourselves, our consumption, and our role in society. Economists demolished the idea that economic growth could be maintained forever in a fossil-fuel driven, finite world. Policy experts questioned whether our current carbon targets were fit for purpose.

But across almost all of the papers presented at the conference, there was an inescapable consensus: a fundamentally different economic system is required, if we are serious about avoiding dangerous climate change, based on nurturing wellbeing rather than stoking corporate profit....

Pieter Breughel the Younger's "Tower of Babel"

Lancet highlights key links between consumption and climate change

AlphaGalileo via the Lancet: Models of future climate scenarios have taken insufficient account of population patterns and trends, according to a UCL review to be published in the print edition of The Lancet on 15th November 2013. The review, “Population, development, and climate change, links and effects on human health”, examines the interconnections between population growth and climate change, from the perspective of global health.

The authors found that while population growth is an important factor, it is consumers, rather than people per se, who drive climate change. Reducing consumption thus represents the most effective way to reduce carbon emissions. This can have substantial health co-benefits, and consideration of human health should therefore be integral to future plans for tackling climate change.

Professor Judith Stephenson, UCL’s Institute for Women’s Health, says: "Disruption of the environment and climate system caused by unprecedented human activity since the industrial revolution confronts us with an urgent and complex problem that requires reduction in growth of both consumption and population for a sustainable world.”

...Although population is an important factor, demographic trends are more significant for climate change than total population, says the review. Consumption patterns, together with ageing and urbanisation in some countries, have bigger implications for health and the reduction of carbon emissions than the total number of people in the world...

A detail of Hieronymous Bosch's "The Seven Deadly Sins"

In Europe, pollution is a masculine noun

Julio Godoy in IPS via Tierramérica: Many aspects of gender inequality are well known and well documented. But there seems to be little awareness that male behaviour leads to greater emissions of climate-changing gases. That is the conclusion of two independent studies by separate teams of European scientists, both based on statistical data on consumption and daily activities of men and women in industrialised countries.

Frédéric Chomé, a French consultant on environmental and sustainable development issues, stated that a typical French woman causes emissions of 32.3 kilograms of carbon dioxide (CO2) per day, on average, while a man causes 39.3 kg of CO2 emissions. "The estimates are based on a study of human activities separated by gender, conducted by France's National Institute of Statistics and Economics (INSEE)," Chomé told Tierramérica.

"Although our calculation method is very approximate, I believe the results are a good indicator of the differences in environmental contamination resulting from the different behaviours of men and women," added the author of the study titled "24 Hours Exactly: Your Personal Carbon Account."

Similar conclusions resulted from a study by Annika Carlsson-Kanyama, of Sweden, and Riita Räty, of Finland, about the behaviours of men and women in 10 daily activities in Germany, Greece, Norway and Sweden. According to their study, "Comparing Energy Use by Gender, Age and Income in Some European Countries," men consume more meat and processed beverages than women do, use automobiles more frequently and driving longer distances, resulting in greater CO2 emissions.

Commenting on the two studies, Corinna Altenburg and Fritz Reusswig, of Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, noted that some of the more polluting habits attributed to the male population are the result of the social roles they usually play in society…

A traffic jam off the Elbtunnel in Hamburg, shot by Hannes Grobe(who takes an occasional break from the polar regions), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

A call for Millennium Consumption Goals

Feizal Samath in IPS: A Sri Lankan scientist is calling for the drafting of "Millennium Consumption Goals" to force rich countries to curb their climate-damaging consumption habits, in the same way the poor have Millennium Development Goals to get them out of poverty.

Prof. Mohan Munasinghe, expert on sustainable development and climate change, says, "We now have Millennium Development Goals (MDG) for the poor. We should extend that to the rich and make sure they consume more sustainably." He said this is needed because 85 percent of all consumption in world is done by the top 20 percent of the world’s rich.

"If they can be more sustainable in consumption, it can reduce the environmental burden by a tremendous amount," said Munasinghe in an interview with IPS in Colombo, where he is based. Munasinghe is vice-chair of the Geneva-based Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore.

He noted the severe changes in the weather pattern due to El Niño and La Niña happening one after the other in December. El Niño is a regional phenomenon that heats up parts of the Pacific region, affects South America and the rest of world, while La Niña, which also starts in the Pacific, sets off a cold spell…

At the Louvre: Side B (reverse) of a two-sided Mithraic relief. Found at Fiano Romano, near Rome "couché dans un petit réduit de briques" in 1926. White marble (H. 62cm, W. 67 cm, D. 16 cm) on a travertine base (H. 10cm, W. 76cm, D. 50cm). 2nd-3rd century.In the middle, a bull's hide, of which the head and one hindleg are visible. Sol and Mithras recline on it side by side. Mithras holds a torch in his left hand and extends his right hand behind Sol. Sol is dressed only in a cape, fastened on his right shoulder with a fibula. Around Sol's head is a crown of eleven rays. He holds a whip in his left hand and extends the right towards a torchbearer who offers him a rhyton. In the lower right is another torchbearer, with raised torch in his left hand. In his right hand, a caduceus held into the water emerging from the ground. In the middle, an altar in the coils of a crested snake. In the upper left corner, Luna in a cloud, looking away. Traces of red paint on the attire of Sol, Mithras and the torchbearers.