WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN THE PROBLEMS ARE JUST SO DAMN BIG?

Posted on Tuesday, 15th November - 2022, in OPINIONS, by Dr Garry Richards OAM FAIM

Global Warming Is A Great Example Of Those Big Problems.

The question is: 

What do we actually do in the face of big problematic issues that confront companies as well as individuals?

For example, Awareness about global warming, pollution issues and ecological, consumer, or natural resources is high. But agreement about what to do about them is not so high. Some companies and some individuals hold strong views, but the views seem to be bipolar. 

Should companies go green? Should individuals go green?

If so – why?

• Out of the conviction that it is right? 
• Out of fashion?  
• Because it makes you look responsible? 
• Because consumers expect it?
• Because regulations demand it?

The former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called world leaders to a conference on climate change “to make climate change the top priority”. Meanwhile, Mamata Begum, a mother struggling to feed her kids in Bangladesh, says “My kids haven’t got enough to eat, I can’t think about climate change!”

China, the world’s biggest polluter, ranks global warming as 11th on its priority list, and over the period of its highest pollution, it lifted 360 million of its people out of poverty.

Europeans, who supposedly are far more attuned to social and world issues rank addressing global warming as 10th, and have seen large parts of its population descend closer to poverty! 

Ex-US President Al Gore stated in his speech, receiving the Nobel Prize in 2007, that the North Pole would be gone completely within 7 years. That was almost 7 years ago. Its ice extent has been reduced at the rate of 13% per decade.

The answer would be … Renewable energy! Statistics shows that while the developed countries including the US, Germany, and France currently get 10 to 18% of its energy from renewables, Brazil, one of the rapidly developing countries obtains 45% of its energy from renewables. 

Interestingly, the Centre for Global Development’s study indicates: Spending $10 Billion on renewables would lift 20 million people out of poverty…Or spend $10 billion on natural gas and lift 90 million out of poverty!

We know the earth’s doomed anyway. Our sun, like all suns of its type, is expanding and is going to explode in a billion years. Before then, in about 500 million years it’s going to consume the earth in a fireball.

So what’s all the fuss about? Real estate investment on this planet is only a short term investment…buy! But hold for only 499 million years, then sell out before the bubble bursts!

SO WHAT ARE THE SOLUTIONS?

There are theories and suggestions everywhere but it seems to me that the only real solutions are going to be found in… 

• Innovation, 
• Creativity and 
• New thinking.

In the meantime…we all have a headache and still no absolute answer… But I will continue using recycled paper and a small car and I will keep doing my little bit to try to help…I just can’t bring myself to simply give up, roll over and wait for the end! Besides, I have real estate investments, I want to last the full 499 million years!

CONCLUSION

But let’s be brave and positive. Here’s a go at a one-shot solution.  

Try this:  

Innovate the price and ease of delivery of green energy below that of fossil fuels…

(and I suspect you will have to stand back or you will get trampled by the rush of people switching!)

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