Taikun, the World Bank idea of carbon credits immediately points out the problem of a world government with excessive control.
If 80% of the world agreed that carbon credits was a good idea, I'd go along with it, even though I think worrying CO2 emissions is daft, counter-intuitive and ignorant.
A few wacoes in government decide that there is a problem that needs fixing and invariably that fixing involves them getting a LOT of money and a LOT of control. So it is in this instance. They will get a $20 billion pile of dollars to pilfer and they will boss around anyone using, or wanting to produce atmospheric carbon dioxide, or more accurately, anyone who wants to use carbon, such as coal, or methane, to produce some non-emitting material, such as, perhaps, plastics.
To reiterate my refrain, carbon has been stripped from the ecosphere over eons, buried in vast, mass graves of coal, oil, bituminous and gas deposits, and don't forget limestone = the bones of umpty petatrillion beasties who once roamed Earth. Unimaginable [well, I have trouble with how many] numbers of living things have died after doing their bit for DNA's development, then been subducted under tectonic plates, or otherwise buried in swamps, marine deposits and all over the place. They did their duty on Earth as best they could, but there is only so much carbon to go around, so their progeny are fewer than the splendid carboniferous era which saw life in full bloom, though admittedly without the benefit of our wisdom, pleasure and gracious presence.
The Earth is dying and that's why there are ice-ages. Gaia isn't about life, it's about death. Well, it is about life in the sense that we have been Made in Earth and we have the ability to bring Gaia back to life. Gaia is a mindless, ignorant idiot which admittedly got the patent on DNA which has been very useful, but didn't know what to do next. We do know. Or should know.
Unless we save the ecosphere by putting the carbon back where it belongs, which is in the ecosphere, we'll suffer more and heavier ice-ages over the next million years [which is irrelevant as it's the next 200 we need to think about].
If we don't act to stop the next ice age, which could happen any time now, and bear in mind the ice-ages happen cusp-like, over a couple of years they are unstoppably underway, we'll find ourselves up to our necks in snow, which doesn't melt over summer, and having to move back to Africa, India and the tropics, which will once again become the temperates. Egypt will go green! The Sahara will bloom.
There's lots of room for us all, but it would be very inconvenient, all having to move house at once. But at least some decent roading and other infrastructure systems could be built without having to sneak around existing, old, preservation society junk.
It's true that as the tide rises, as Earth warms up a little more with the CO2, some of us will have to move uphill, but that's a very good thing anyway, even without global warming tide rises.
That's because there is going to be a very rapid and sudden and totally destructive rise in sea level when an incoming bolide causes a large splash over the Pacific Ocean and the most exciting tsunami anyone has seen. They should view it from at least 50 metres above sea level, and preferably 1 kilometre, as a lot of the splashes are much higher than 50 metres. Anyone sleeping at sea level, or owning high value assets there, should be registered as insane.
True, ports need to be at sea level, and probabilistically they will earn sufficient return before they are destroyed, but houses and other assets are better located above the level at which, say, 95% of bolide splashes would reach, which I hereby guess is about 100 metres. I currently live at 60 metres, with some fairly good mountainous protection to the east and west [the Coromandel Peninsula and Waitakere range] which will reflect the great bulk of the incoming tsunami.
The World Bank people involved in carbon credits need to get a real job. Come to think of it, with the introduction of the Q in a few years [a cyber currency which will be invented by QUALCOMM, I hope, based on share ownership in which people trade shares electronically which will mean the US$ and other fiat currencies cease to have value], there won't be a need for a world bank.
Mqurice
PS: People should not move inland to places like Taupo, which is 500 metres above sea level and a nice place to live. That's because it is a caldera, which is about as likely to blow up on any given day, as there is to be substantial bolide-induced tsunami. That would be out of the frying pan, into the fire. |
