the brilliantly leaping gazelle

They were at it again yesterday in The Guardian, once more promulgating the totally disingenuous and blatantly self-serving idea that what is needed to combat the threats posed to humanity is to do everything except having less humanity. 

They published an article by David King, chair of the global Climate Crisis Advisory Group, entitled, ‘Humanity’s survival is still within our grasp – just. But only if we take these radical steps’. However, having read the article, he should be chair of the global society of ostrich impersonators, so deep is his head in the sand. Possibly that’s because he knew that the article was intended for The Guardian, which as I’ve pointed out on this blog before, has its entire business model predicated upon telling its readers what they want to hear in order that they keep funding it. 

Which they do, giving so much money in fact, that over half of its income comes through its readers. This means that instead of having one cigar chomping, pin stripe suit wearing and stinking rich old white man as proprietor, one who influences its editorial content to better advance his business interests, they have thousands of proprietors, many drinking fair trade coffee with soya milk, wearing ethically sourced clothing and who possibly identify as non-binary. All of whom are eager to read about how they can still have children and care about climate change.

Hence we have this this choice selection of pandering nonsense ‘But we have agency to change this, and a thriving future is still on the table. To grasp it, we must embark on a radical journey encompassing an essential “4R planet” pathway. This means: reducing emissions; removing the excess greenhouse gases (GHGs) already in the atmosphere; repairing ecosystems; and strengthening local and global resilience against inevitable climate impacts.’

All of which would no doubt help alleviate the situation, but the single most effective solution, the one would that would unquestioningly reduce global consumption and the energy needed to produce the things consumed, halt the expansion of cities by reducing overcrowding and therefore protect natural habitats more would be a curb on population. I have no idea how that might be achieved, only an awareness that whilst such an idea might be unpalatable to some, it doesn’t make it any less necessary.

The scale of the necessity of doing so is only matched by the political avoidance of even discussing it. Indeed, as the United Nations observed recently ‘The world’s population is more than three times larger than it was in the mid-twentieth century. The global human population reached 8.0 billion in mid-November 2022 from an estimated 2.5 billion people in 1950, adding 1 billion people since 2010 and 2 billion since 1998. The world’s population is expected to increase by nearly 2 billion persons in the next 30 years, from the current 8 billion to 9.7 billion in 2050 and could peak at nearly 10.4 billion in the mid-2080s.’

So whilst David King may worry that ‘the world is emitting over 50bn tonnes of GHGs annually into the atmosphere, expressed as CO2 equivalent. Since we are unlikely to achieve a removal rate exceeding 10bn tonnes per annum, there can be no way forward without reducing emissions to a very small figure.’, the most obvious way forward would be to reduce the numbers of humans producing those emissions in the first place, which to me is far more practical than changing the things consumed if there are increasing amounts of consumers to consume them. Or am I missing something?

And in an election campaign, when the electorate are hopefully more engaged with politics than at any other time, politicians should have the moral courage and integrity to be honest. They’re forever banging on about ‘needing to make difficult choices’, but to me there are two choices, one astoundingly simple and the other almost impossibly difficult. Is the current amount of people alive today sustainable and if we don’t want that number to increase, how do we achieve it?

So yes, ‘a seismic cultural shift is imperative to steer humanity away from self-destruction towards a just and sustainable future. We must realign our political will, economic priorities and societal values to recognise that ecological wellbeing is matched to human wellbeing.’ But if that ‘seismic cultural shift’  doesn’t involve addressing the most blindingly obvious causative factor of increased greenhouse gases, continued use of fossil fuels and and the increase of extreme weather events – an increasing population – then any changes are about much use as re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

Deckchairs ethically sourced and made from sustainable materials by workers in the global south, if one is a Guardian reader of course