"Happy for you to go outside of 1,2,3 if you wish.
But I'm not sure where else you can go.
have a go. "
OK, here goes:
Let's look at the next few decades (say, until 2050):
There are one billion people in the developed world who, on a per capita basis, have a carbon footprint today that is around ten times higher than the equivalent per capita carbon emissions figure of the rest of the seven billion people who reside in the under-developed and developing parts of the globe.
Also, that seven billion developing world population figure is likely to reach, and probably exceed, nine billion people over the next three decades.
Now, assuming that:
1.) Over the next three decades, per capita emissions of those people living in the urbanising, industrialising and modernising under-developed and developing countries, are able to be confined to just one-quarter (from the current one-tenth) of current western world per capita carbon emissions.
2.) The one billion people in the developed world (i.e., us) are successful in reducing per capita carbon emissions by 50% (which will be no mean feat, to be sure) over the next three decades.
Question 1:
What will the result of the above be on TOTAL global carbon emissions?
Total global carbon emissions will:
A. Increase by 20%.
B. Increase by 50%.
C. Increase by more than 50%.
D. Decrease.
E. Undergo no change.
Question 2.:
Depending on the answer to Question 1, given the strong correlation between education standards and environmental awareness, if this is indeed an environmental emergency that we have on our hands, why are resources not being mobilised overwhelmingly to the end of conducting a dramatic acceleration in the rate of educatingthe seven billion people (going to more than nine billion, remember) who are going to be the consumers and potential polluters in the future. And on a numerical scale that will dwarf whatever has happened to date.
Put another way, over the past seven or eight decades, an average of a mere 500m people in the developing (read Western) world, and their habits of excessive consumption, waste and pollution, have brought the world to its current state of environmental degradation.
What is going to be the impact in 30 years' time when a population cohort several multiples greater than that 500m figure are consuming, wasting and polluting?
Why is that not where the effort should be focused? i.e., on proactively getting ahead of the 9 billion person curve with education programs on massive scale? Why is there no "war-footing" demands for that seemingly-logical course of action?
In other words, does it not make far more sense to shut the stable door ahead of the next nine horses that are looking to bolt, than it is to focus overwhelmingly on the one horse that has already bolted?
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