Politics and Human Rights.

This post is a follow-up to my last, "Wanting The Impossible", of 3rd May 2023. I'll begin with the total global energy consumption in 2021, which was 176,431 TWh (Terawatt-hours) = 635.156 EJ (exajoules; 1 EJ = 10^18 J), of which 76.047 EJ (11.973%) was contributed by renewable energy of all kinds, and 25.3116 EJ (3.985%) by nuclear power. The remaining 84.042% was supplied by CO2-emitting forms of energy, including the 529.6644 EJ (83.39%) comprised of energy from oil, natural gas and coal; source: Ritchie & Moser (2022) . The world's population in 2021 was 7.8317 billion (source: US Census Bureau, 1 ), which implies that mean energy consumption per capita that year was ~81.1 GJ. Few, if any, are suggesting this was fairly and equitably distributed. Let us now assume an average annual global economic growth rate of 1% p.a. between 2021 and 2050, inclusive, a total of thirty years, resulting in 30% growth. (This may well be on the low side, in fact; see World Eco...

The  Guardian newspaper of 2nd May contained the following item: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/02/many-europeans-want-climate-action-but-less-so-if-it-changes-their-lifestyle-shows-poll. So: a majority of Europeans want climate action, but not if it has an adverse impact on their consumerist, materialist lifestyles! To be fair to them, the same can almost certainly be said of North Americans, many East Asians and Australasians, if not all of them. There are some climate scientists who seem to think that all we have to do to "solve" the climate emergency is end humanity's dependence on fossil fuels and achieve a complete transition of global energy production to renewable energy in as short a time span as possible. Would that things were that simple! They are NOT! In 2021, world energy consumption was 176,431 TWh (Terawatt-hours) = 635.156 EJ (exajoules). Oil, coal, natural gas and traditional biomass made up 529.6644 EJ of that, which is 83.39% of the t...