If this survey is real the messages these young people are receiving are completely wrong.
We need to reduce our impact on our planet but CO2 is a complete red herring. The current ECS (temperature increase for a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere) is centred around 3°C (IPCC AR6). The 2°C will destroy civilisation is simply made up.
Hello PeterRT.
I agree that we can make some reductions in energy use, and most of us have done at least some of that. We have double glazing, roof insulation, as far as is reasonable draught-proof houses, do not generally go racing in our cars and similar. Of course, we are using resources that may run out at some time, but this is inevitable unless we and all future generations use none! With anything more than just surviving we are bound to, and unless the world population decreases hugely, which it doesn't seem to be doing, we are stuck. Assuming that civilisation continues, we cannot stop resource use, but we can look very carefully at what and why they are used. An example is changing our entire car stock for new ones that use more rare resources does not seem very sensible, the same with heat pumps. Rebuilding the entire electrical infrastructure would take huge new resources, all of which are very energy-intensive, and the overall gain is in reality quite small. The general indicator for decisions ought to be the energy payback period, in other words, “how long does it take to show an advantage in overall energy”, and is this longer than the lifetime of the use. In the case of cars, this is somewhat dubious, probably better homes have an overall gain with more insulation. There is a fixation on emissions, and some of those like PM2.5 from vehicles have a very dubious science background, the savings overall are probably non-existent.
In all these things one needs to follow the money very carefully, and many proponents deliberately do not do this, they are devoid of economics knowledge. It is a very powerful indicator of actual gainers and losers, the losers usually being the poorer parts of our societies. Such discrimination is in my view morally wrong and basically criminal, it is a means of exploitation. You will note the antics of XR and insulate Britain, they are hypocritical in energy wastage, and simply wish to cause disruption and inefficiencies in our society.
Hello PeterRT.
I agree that we can make some reductions in energy use, and most of us have done at least some of that. We have double glazing, roof insulation, as far as is reasonable draught-proof houses, do not generally go racing in our cars and similar. Of course, we are using resources that may run out at some time, but this is inevitable unless we and all future generations use none! With anything more than just surviving we are bound to, and unless the world population decreases hugely, which it doesn't seem to be doing, we are stuck. Assuming that civilisation continues, we cannot stop resource use, but we can look very carefully at what and why they are used. An example is changing our entire car stock for new ones that use more rare resources does not seem very sensible, the same with heat pumps. Rebuilding the entire electrical infrastructure would take huge new resources, all of which are very energy-intensive, and the overall gain is in reality quite small. The general indicator for decisions ought to be the energy payback period, in other words, “how long does it take to show an advantage in overall energy”, and is this longer than the lifetime of the use. In the case of cars, this is somewhat dubious, probably better homes have an overall gain with more insulation. There is a fixation on emissions, and some of those like PM2.5 from vehicles have a very dubious science background, the savings overall are probably non-existent.
In all these things one needs to follow the money very carefully, and many proponents deliberately do not do this, they are devoid of economics knowledge. It is a very powerful indicator of actual gainers and losers, the losers usually being the poorer parts of our societies. Such discrimination is in my view morally wrong and basically criminal, it is a means of exploitation. You will note the antics of XR and insulate Britain, they are hypocritical in energy wastage, and simply wish to cause disruption and inefficiencies in our society.
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