The secret to a better humanity
A perspective
1. Eat less meat (or no meat). Giving up meat reduces your food-related carbon emissions by around 30%, possibly as much as 50%. As less land area is needed to feed people on veggies, less animal production frees up huge areas of land that could be used for enhancing biodiversity and/or climate change mitigation.
It seems that anxiety about climate change is a growing problem.
And this is entirely understandable. So let’s get the bad news out of the way first, THEN reasons to feel a little better.
The Earth is indeed facing a calamitous change. Continued climate changing emissions mean that the planet is very steadily heating up, resulting in areas of desertification, melting glaciers and shrinking polar ice. The melting ice will cause sea levels to rise around the world resulting in low-lying areas being flooded, displacing millions of people and destroying some coastal ecosystems.
Ecosystems will change, globally, in response to climate change. In the past, this has meant that ecosystems had to literally move to a suitable new territory. Ecosystems are currently in bad shape already from habitat destruction and subsequent loss of volume and coverage. They’re not in a great shape to move. Extinctions will be high.
Why do many of us find it hard to believe in scientific facts and instead fall for weird conspiracy theories? Why do we lack trust in politicians or the media? It’s become really hard to trust anybody anymore, partly due to the deluge of contradictory info on social media.
Science and reason have helped to get humanity where it is, so why turn our backs on that now?
Ok, so we’re all fed up with wearing masks. And some people don’t want the Covid vaccine.
One of my concerns around Covid conspiracy theories is that they are either rightwing in nature or are a gateway into rightwing thought and other rightwing, even fascist, conspiracy theories and campaigns.
Continue reading “Are Covid conspiracies rightwing? Asking for a friend”
Are you one of those people who aren’t all that bothered about climate change?
You might look out of the window and think…. It looks nice enough, the weather. And when you last went on holiday, sure it was really hot and some local temperature records were broken, but that happens now and again anyway, right? You might think to yourself that, hey, the climate has always changed, so it’s all part of natural long terms trends.
If that’s you, then you’re the person I’ve written this article for.
Is it natural for humans to eat meat?
Humans are far from the natural animal that they once were. We are way beyond ‘natural’ and getting more ‘unnatural’ all the time. It’s very obvious that humans are very different from all other animals. We know that we live on a spherical planet as part of a solar system. We know where that solar system is within a spiral galaxy. We know the evolutionary history of our planet and how we are genetically related to all other life on Earth; we are more related to some things than others, but at the end of the day we are all ‘Family Earth.’ Our technological sophistication allows us to do incredible things; things that would have been unimaginable just a few decades ago.
So if what we are like today was unimaginable 50 years ago, how unimaginable will we be in another 50 years?
It looks like, so far, activism has largely failed on climate change. There have been wins, here and there, but the relentless push of economic growth has overtaken these. For example – wins on halting rainforest destruction – we might stop it for a while, but the push for relentless economic growth eventually overcomes these gains. With climate change, one of the wins is the growth of renewable energy. This has made a difference, but still, the push for growth means ever higher carbon emissions.
What could we have done differently?
Continue reading “Where environmental activism got it wrong”
You have probably noticed that electric vehicles (EVs) are becoming more common. Charging stations for EVs are popping up all over the place. You might be worried about the future of your own beloved internal combustion engine (ICE) car, or maybe you’ve been thinking about shifting to an electric car.
One thing’s for sure, the shift of our whole transport system to EVs is underway. There will be a few exceptions to this; the main one being a shift to hydrogen for certain uses such as long haul flight. But one thing’s for certain; EVs will soon dominate.
The other aspect of the transport revolution that you will have heard of is the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI will become increasingly integrated with our lives, transport included. Cars will become more like computers on wheels with all the cars and indeed all of everything, connected to each other. Everything can talk to everything else, if need be.
So now put these two things together – EV personal transport with AI.
What does the future look like now for the personal car?
Continue reading “Electric vehicles with artificial intelligence – making the world a better place”