The tip of the iceberg

I went this morning to a talk (part of Scarborough’s Big Ideas By The Sea festival) by Professor Dan Parson of Hull University’s Energy and Environment Institute on the subject of climate change. As I listened I had to wonder what’s changed in the last 20 years? Only the science has grown firmer, the policy response has not. Dan suggested the audience look at the concentration figures of CO2 in the year of their birth. I found an excellent website—www.Sealevel.info—which has a useful interactive graph which allows you to do just that. In my case, CO2 levels in 1953 stood at 312.5 parts per million. By 2021 they had risen to 416.4. It’s not all my fault but no-one’s blameless. The trouble is, despite all the talk, emission rates are rising, half as fast again as they were in the 1980s. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg, as I read on another website. It can take 50 years for carbon dioxide’s full warming effect to be felt. I would never argue against ‘doing something about it’ but it would bode well to realise that all things being equal our form of civilisation is stuffed. It is the phrase ‘form of civilisation’ which makes the climate change debate heated with ideological opposites, which boil down to Capitalism v. Life (alternatives are available).