Op-Ed: COP 28, hope or hype? ‘Last gasp’ or get it right?
Global environmental summits all have one thing in common – Nobody’s satisfied with the results. If you check out the news feeds, you’ll see that nobody even agrees on what COP 28 achieved.
The real sticking point, as usual, was fossil fuels. The problems of pollution and contamination alone justify the end of carbon-based fuels. Air pollution, the most truly useless byproduct of fossil fuels, kills about 6,7 million people a year worldwide. Thanks to pollution, if you don’t smoke, you’re effectively “passive smoking” a few packets a day, just without the tobacco.
Note: It amazes me that nobody has made any effective connection to the rapid rise of respiratory diseases and pollution. It looks like waddling around the obvious.
The US is one of the top 10 major sufferers but is still politically groveling to the fossil fuel line, for absolutely no good reason. Politics is no longer about human survival.
The EPA is ignored by the conservatives for “business reasons”, aka lobbies. The absurd US “left” apparently won’t condescend to address global disasters, being too interested in achieving absolutely nothing on other issues.
This 19th-century technology is also sacred to Big Money. It just happens to be poisoning the Earth. The world is experiencing an OD of carbon in the atmosphere.
Fossil fuels are very old tech. They’re the last gasp of the Industrial Revolution. The technology already exists to replace fossil fuels as energy sources in just about all applications.
The fossil fuels will inevitably go the way of all old tech. They’re no longer efficient and they never were safe in health terms. These are the original HAZMAT materials, explosive and corrosive, poisonous, and polluting since day one.
Politically, fossil fuels are rapidly becoming non-viable. Ask a Millennial or Gen Z about fossil fuels, and you’ll only get one response.
It’s a simple problem – If you want a world to live on, don’t poison it. You’d think that was pretty comprehensible.
Apparently, it isn’t. Fossil fuel stakeholders seem to be totally lacking in understanding of carbon chemistry. The word “fuel” is their mental hernia. Either that or there are too many middlemen in the way. Big money for logistics, retail, distribution, etc. could well be the real problem.
It’s hard to believe that oil and coal producers are determined to die of their products. Why should they care what their products are used for if they still make big money?
Materials science and just about all other technologies have long since moved on. The fossil fuel industry hasn’t.
Carbon can be, and is, used for just about everything other than fuel. The sheer number of uses of carbon compounds could fill multiple encyclopedias. Consumer polymers are just about all carbon. Graphene is carbon and worth a lot more than oil. Carbon fiber, strangely enough, is carbon, and so on.
Carbon is one of the most useful and widely studied elements in the world. If carbon were abolished as a fuel, it would barely scratch that demand. It’d simply be used in other forms. Demand would still be huge.
Ironically, carbon also has many positive environmental uses. Anyone with a few years of high school and a working brain cell would have jumped on these uses as alternative values for fossil fuels, but they haven’t.
COP 28 had another major millstone to manage, and it didn’t. The inability of global governments to respond quickly and effectively to crises was fully illustrated.
It’s either the last gasp of fossil fuels or humanity’s last gasp. Any preferences?
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
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Op-Ed: COP 28, hope or hype? ‘Last gasp’ or get it right?
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