Rutgers: Scientists Question the Use of "Tipping Point" Metaphor in Climate Change Discussions

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. Decades ago, my mother told me "I expect them to 'mine landfills.'"

Her thinking was that there were rich deposits of metals just beneath the surface. (Why dig deep into the ground to produce “ore?”)

Personally, I don’t think that any type of “messaging” will save us. We’ve tried multiple approaches and still, we hear “Drill baby! Drill!” What we need is a way to travel back in time to create compelling “messaging” in the “post-war” period.

While, clearly, the population explosion helped get us into this mess, I don’t see birth control getting us out of it. Here’s the way I see it, using “back of the envelope” reasoning here, Let’s assume:

1. average life expectancy is 70 years, and always will be
2. age brackets are even
3. persons of every age are responsible for the same level of emissions
4. (To celebrate the “New Year”) everyone stops having babies, Jan, 1, 2025

• After 7 years (Jan 1, 2032) our population will have decreased 10% and emissions will have been cut by the same amount.
• After 35 years (Jan 1, 2060) our population will have been reduced by ½ and our emissions will have been cut by the same amount.

The stated goal is to achieve “Net Zero” (a 100% cut in emissions) by 2050. That’s a problem.

Do you see where I’m going with this? Cuts in population and emissions like that, while dramatic are not sufficient to decrease “global heating” let alone reverse it.

We need much more dramatic cuts than that, much sooner. “Net Zero” is not enough to stop the heating. We need “Net Negative” and you will not achieve that through “birth control” alone, if it is achievable at all. To achieve “Net Negative” will require a lot of work, and, well… “Sr. Citizens” are notoriously unproductive.

Now, if a miracle occurs, and we discover some very easy, very effective, very quick way to remove phenomenal amounts of “greenhouse gases” from the atmosphere and the oceans, then, in theory, we could just do that faster to make up for the population, if that population were willing to live in a more sustainable fashion.