Victims of Circumstance - Climate Change et alia

From the Glamour of the Oscars in California to the Gates Of Hell within European borders - and the glory and glitz of The Geneva Auto Show in between it all - what an extraordinary week - and it's all connected...  

'Leo The Lion' roars his most important lines! 

And he's not the only one to bang on about it all!... 

The Sky is the Open Sewer for our current civilisation as it's currently organised

Al Gore - TED - February 2016

Have you noticed - there always seems to be mostly 2 'sides' to everything?... Apple v Android, Batteries v Fuel Cells, Republican v Democrat, East v West...

And the BIG one.

Climate Change v Climate Change Skepticism

Which choice have you made - or is that decision still work-in-progress?

Either way, unlike expressing your preference for a particular graphical user interface, or your sense of how to best exploit energy and power, or who floats your boat on the political stage, the consequences of where you stand on the BIG one are life changing - yours and billions of others.

I've pitched my tent in the Climate Change camp and I'd like to say why.

Firstly, I'd like to be specific in my definition. 'Man-made accelerated climate change' is the bit I'm bothered with. Probably the only bit we can do anything about. We can't do anything about the wobble of the Earth on its axis, solar flares and electro magnetism, and any as yet unknown influences on our planet within the celestial glory of it all.     

In the meantime I think Climate Change skeptics are both inevitable - and important. They retain that Yin & Yang of it all that is perhaps curiously comforting. Asking the question why - over and over again - demands an honest and credible answer.

There are seemingly endless facts and data-sets that enable the opposing camps to set their stalls out. Both are often very compelling, and I must confess to occasional wavering in the past myself...

However.

Consider this simple thought.

In doing what we can to mitigate our own impact on the planet we will at least clean up the air in our cities, better enable the challenges of billions of people living cheek by jowl to move around the place, and share more equitably some of the basic things in life. 

Many people have already taken matters into their own hands.

One of the urgent changes we need is in wrestling the production of energy from global entities over to local production and consumption - microgrids -  surely more efficient and effective compared to what we have today. Above and below stand testament to the fact this is now happening.

BIG Oil sits at the fulcrum of so many ills of the world. Look at the location of the majority of conflicts - coincidence? 

And what if the Climate Change skeptics are correct?

All of that time effort and money spent rearranging things for no need...will that all have been folly? As is often the case, a picture (or in this case a cartoon) speaks a thousand words in answer to that.   

What if the Climate Change believers are right - but the skeptics 'win the day' ...

A Nature-Hike through the Book Of Revelation

Al Gore - TED

We all bear witness to the connected consequences of man-made accelerated climate change right here right now. For some it has meant inconvenience - for others (mostly the poor) it has been a matter of life or death consequences.

For instance - The European Refugee Crisis, and something I was unaware of until very recently...

The 2006-2010 drought turned 60% of Syria's fertile land into desert - and drove 1.5 million people into Syria's already crowded cities.

We all know what has happened since that time...  

Photos - Ai Weiwei

Rather than resorting to razor wire, the wringing of hands, and bunging bundles of cash over the fence, a bit of root cause analysis might go a long way to stemming the tide of desperate humanity. Not the tide that's just washed in - but for the tides that will surely turn over years to come. Simple solutions to complex problems? - not really, but a better plan than we clearly have today? 

Absolutely.   

At this point I'll defer to Mr Al Gore - he has critics and allies in equal measure - but please watch his latest pitch on it all and make your own mind up either way...

To conclude on an upbeat note -

Despite our often witnessed stupidity as a species - we are also blessed with profound ingenuity. Things that are broken can get fixed, and like-minded people are more closely linked together than ever before to work out collectively how to get that done.

Voices in high places champion the change - and in many companies around the world there is a dynamic momentum to it all - and I certainly agree with this observation when it comes to electric vehicles...

Things take longer to happen than you think they will - and then they happen faster than you thought they would  

Rudiger Dornbusch

www.electricvehiclesoutlook.com