Drawing Conclusions

It’s good to see people are keen to do something to change the direction the world is heading with regard to unsustainable consumption. Earthday is a neat idea. But I wonder if it really makes a difference. We had a brochure sent to us the other day about the bus network here in Canterbury and it pointed out that in the 12 years since 1998 they had doubled the bus rides taken each year to 17 million ticketed rides which is great. Unfortunately car trips had increased the same amount so the proportion of people on the bus has stayed the same. That means, if I understand this correctly, that in the last 12 years we have doubled the amount of car usage here in Canterbury. This is the same period of time we have become ever more concerned with global warming and carbon emissions. It seems to me we are not really making any real changes. I am not criticizing anyone for this. The system is set up to keep on doing what we are doing. We do what we can but it is tough.

A better thing to do than one hour of lights out would be to set up a giant billboard in the center of town with last years fuel and energy consumption figures and an up to date figure of this years consumption with the goal of hitting 5 percent lower total at the end of the year. It would require an advertising campaign to go with it to give us tips on what to do to make changes…or we could just turn off our lights for an hour.

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Sea level rises

drawinz — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 03:19:31 +0000

In the climate change debate I have heard people talk about how sea level rises are already starting to affect places like Bangladesh. I am not saying I don’t believe them but I am saying I don’t understand it. I thought water found its own level and that a rise in one area of the giant pond of oceans would have corresponding changes everywhere else. I haven’t noticed any changes to the sea level around Christchurch. Is the rise greater around the equator? Have we had rises here but nothing as noticeable? I don’t know.

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