Just as budgets steer every household and every corporation, so should every nation signed up to the Paris Agreement be steered by a carbon budget. This carbon budget should be treated like a monetary budget, the actions of the Swedish Government (even with the Green Party in power) up to now can only be described as fraudulent. This message comes from Climate Scientist Kevin Anderson, most recently in his presentation to the Swedish Climate Folk Parliament on the 5th May 2018 as it passed a motion to adopt such a budget. Continue reading “Swedish Climate Parliament passes motion for true carbon budget”
Category: Energy constrained
We have to do something else with what we have left
In order to ensure that the climate does not flip to a situation where human life would be drastically reduced, we need to keep warming under 2 degrees. To do that we need to restrict release of climate gasses into the air. Stopping the burgeoning of fossil fuels is one major part of that. But there is some wiggle room, we could maybe burn a little more……. The question is, what are we going to burn it doing?
If you ask me, ( a few do), I would say we need to use it to create sustainable communities that are far less dependent on transportation of goods to and from them. These communities need to have their own renewable sources of energy, and be designed so food and fiber production is carried out close by without the need to burn fossil fuel.
The diagram below explains how much is left. Anyone got a detailed idea of what we could do with it?
Embedded energy and the future of product design
This matrix divides products and services up depending on energy required to make and run them. What will happen as energy prices rise or fossil fuel becomes scarce? Products that require a lot of energy to make and run will less affordable. These “make once, run expensively” types of products will migrate to the quadrants on the right. The “make once, run cheaply” or “make cheaply, use cheaply” will take over. Continue reading “Embedded energy and the future of product design”
Stephen Hinton Consulting 