Wednesday, April 12, 2023 1:52:55 AM
Apologies as I've posted this before but sometimes it takes more than one iteration of thought before I give up an old idea and accept a new one. I'm not sure how long I've been posting on this board but I've found the board name intriguing since I was first introduced to it. For me the core question has been; if climate change is a problem we should solve, is affluence more problematic than population growth? I've always thought population growth is the core issue and that was likely correct 20+ years ago. As population grows, incremental changes in middle class consumption of fossil fuels have always been more than off-set by a larger population. We can confirm the veracity this hypothesis by measuring the growth or lack thereof, of CO2 in the atmosphere. No one needs to look this up, growth is unrelenting.
The problem in the 21st Century is that we in the Western world have expanded the idea of the middle class life style to the ROW and it's growing exponentially faster than the overall population. So is affluence now the primary climate problem? If so, I would suggest we've created a problem no one of any standing will even try to solve over the next 20 years because the right to affluence is the fastest growing 21st Century religion and it's about to grow even faster over the rest of the decade according to a 2018 Brookings study, (link below).
So the question is; if the study is reasonably correct and the middle class will grow ~40% over this 12 year period how can we expect atmospheric CO2 to moderate? Should we care when it's clear almost no one does, including the rather righteous Tesla driver? And that's a first world issue. How do you tell a newly middle class person in China who's parents worked in a rice field that their affluence is a problem? How about India? Their economy is only beginning to take off. I might be short sighted but I don't see a solution other than ensuring you're more affluent than the great majority of people seeking affluence. Crass of course but it seems to me that's what the majority of people in the world are doing.
Brookings repost
The problem in the 21st Century is that we in the Western world have expanded the idea of the middle class life style to the ROW and it's growing exponentially faster than the overall population. So is affluence now the primary climate problem? If so, I would suggest we've created a problem no one of any standing will even try to solve over the next 20 years because the right to affluence is the fastest growing 21st Century religion and it's about to grow even faster over the rest of the decade according to a 2018 Brookings study, (link below).
So the question is; if the study is reasonably correct and the middle class will grow ~40% over this 12 year period how can we expect atmospheric CO2 to moderate? Should we care when it's clear almost no one does, including the rather righteous Tesla driver? And that's a first world issue. How do you tell a newly middle class person in China who's parents worked in a rice field that their affluence is a problem? How about India? Their economy is only beginning to take off. I might be short sighted but I don't see a solution other than ensuring you're more affluent than the great majority of people seeking affluence. Crass of course but it seems to me that's what the majority of people in the world are doing.
Brookings repost
You never know who's swimming naked until the tide goes out - Warren Buffett
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