Our final week was all about what we might do about climate change in the future.
I was hoping we'd finally get a look at some potential solutions but instead we were asked to calculate our carbon footprint and figure out what we could do to help.
Disappointing to say the least.
The average man on the street, if they ever think about it, feels overwhelmed by the scale of the climate change problem. This is exemplified by the rate at which China is currently building coal fired power stations (1 a week isn't it?). How on earth can we hope to reduce emissions in the face of China's staggering economic growth?
The fact is though, it can be done. Even the Chinese are acutely aware of the effects of their growth and working hard to reduce their impact.
As I said in one of my answers on the course, things like carbon capture, energy storage, smart grids, super-grids, and energy efficiency will be key to our fight against climate change.
Also investment in R&D on renewables; bringing down the price of renewables, whilst raising the cost of fossil fuels to encourage rapid development and deployment of new forms of clean energy.
Replacing coal stations with nuclear, or gas would be a useful stop-gap until cleaner, cheaper forms of power take over.
Re-forestation is essential. We also need to stop cutting down forests/replacing food crops with biofuel crops. We need to make more effective use of farmland by using more of it for crops rather than livestock. That means we need to eat less meat (Our family has at least one 'veggie' day a week).
We need to put an end to consumerism for the sake of it. Not only does it waste energy, it wastes raw materials and even precious water (Yes everything has it's own water footprint).
We need to de-couple carbon emissions from economic growth.
And so on.
My point is that there are loads of things we can do to reduce emissions to the required levels even with current technology. It doesn't have to be financially crippling. In fact, it would be far cheaper than having to deal with the consequences of business-as-usual.
All we need is the collective will to do it.
