Richard Heinberg: the problem is that we don't know what's the problem

Cassandra's Legacy:

The Italian National Railroad ("Trenitalia") prints on every ticket it issues an estimate of the amount of CO2 emissions avoided by purchasing it. I am not so sure that Trenitalia's heavy, high-speed trains are such great energy savers. Maybe, but in any case, fairness would dictate that the ticket should include something like, "but, you asshole, if you had stayed home, you would have avoided a lot more CO2 emissions!"

This is just an example of how the whole "ecological movement" seems to have settled to becoming little more than accountants in CO2 saving. Apparently, knowing that you saved "2.5 kg of CO2" (assuming that it is true) should make you feel that you are doing something to fight climate change. But, if you think about that, it is just a little prayer to the climate Gods so that they would spare us from their wrath. The problem cannot be solved by these little tricks; climate change is just a symptom of a much deeper problem: it is the wholesale destruction of the planetary ecosystem, in turn caused by resource overexploitation (aka, overshoot). We won't ever be able to cure this planetary sickness by looking only at the symptoms.



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