A Response to the Guardian Article by Khaled Diab

Here we have a Hong Kong response to the Guardian Article by

Khaled Diab
guardian.co.uk,
Friday July 25 2008


Title:

Back to basics on climate change

Here are the main points from that article:

★mainstream thinking has focused on the idea that a low-carb Kyoto energy diet will save our obese societies.

★ I don't believe that our oil-based economies are sustainable and I think that switching to renewable energy is essential to our future.

★ According to a 1999 estimate by the American Petroleum Institute, the world's oil supplies would be depleted between 2062 and 2094.

★This was based on estimated proven reserves of 1.4 to 2 trillion barrels and consumption at 80 million barrels per day.

★in 2005, daily oil consumption already passed the 83.5 million barrel per day mark.

★Coal at current production levels is likely to run out within 150 years. If it is used as an oil substitute, many decades would be knocked off this projection.

★At the current rate of deforestation, all tropical forests in the world might disappear by 2090.

★more than half of Papua New Guinea's rain forest – the third largest in the world – could disappear by 2021.

★we will be facing a global food and wood shortage pretty soon, as well as the collapse of the farming land that will replace the forests, due to soil erosion and depletion.

★Droughts and desertification are also threatening millions of people. The Sahara desert is growing at a rate of up to 30 miles a year;

★Within a couple of generations, the global economy will have outgrown the globe.

★There is a desperate need to rethink our attitudes to consumerism, the disposable culture, overpopulation and the economic growth orthodoxy


This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Friday July 25 2008. It was last updated at 19:00 on July 25 2008.


The Response from a Hong Kong based observer:



Dear leechard,

The article about the environmental problems of earth that people now face is nothing of interest to me. It has been talked round the clock in many media sites. What interests me more, is a comment to this article. To let you have a picture on it, I have attached these two documents which both of them are in doc form.

This article is really interesting, as this gentleman has found a special way to view the modern society problem. I consider this writing as the representative of all essays telling us that the present environmental deterioration is not as serious as what we think, monetary methods can solve all crisis, just like The film made by Channel 4 in UK( I will talk about that later). I would not agree with much of the points given in this article, and I shall explain it one by one.

The first mistake, I think, is his belief that money is so powerful that could help us to solve any energy problem, water problem, and metal shortage problem. That is what he said: “The more expensive they are, the more we will find.”,” Wealth insulates us from the worst” I cannot deny that, in a short time, man, driven by the strong monetary power behind the discovery of new resource, shall use their ability to the hilt to find these resources. Also, man, being motivated by large monetary reward, shall try to modify what he did to minimize the waste generated and maximize the volume of output. But if it were successfully solving all the problems of the world, why, according to the result revealed by the research, the resource that we now have is more scarce, compared with that we had 20 years ago? I think he would not answer it using his logic. He may have mistaken the focus that problem of scarcity we now have, which is the demand for that product, has outstripped the supply of that resources and the situation is going to get worse nowadays. Where can people find another source of resources so that the supply of resource can still be consistent with the demand? Apart from known source which their produce is decreasing rapidly, the unknown sources, claiming themselves to be rich of oil and food, shall find it hard to be able to produce enough resources for human in long term if the present trend of consumption continues. They would soon run off one day. It is just like the son of a wealthy man spent all his money one day and finds that he is now in heavy debt and finds it difficult to maintain the basic standard of life.

The monetary forces, or the inevitable hand (in Adam’s view), is of no use in solving the problem but to make the problem more severe. Only those tycoons would still have the power to buy these resources for their own uses and the poverty people can find no means to survive. If such situation appears, I do not think that it is a society that man can still live, and it is the biggest threat that human would face soon. And I believe that even money can buy all the guarding apparatus for themselves, they can never buy a thousand, and even, hundred years of safety. You and many philosophers said, Money is just a tool for exchange

The second mistake is his negligence of the impact of environment when trees in developing world are cut. His words are “The West has more (trees) than ever “and “the Developed World we have more forest than we did in 1900. What is the difference?” when answering the wood shortage problem I am very sad to hear so, as the trees there shall help to regulate the climate of the world by controlling carbon dioxide content in atmosphere. If there were no trees, these places shall become a desert and the people living there shall move, which creates, in turn, the immigration pressure on developed world. He is also in doubt with the rate of deforestation in Panama forest, but I think it is highly likely the present trend shall continue. As he has pointed out earlier, if man understands that cutting all forest in his country shall bring him good fortunate, he shall be happy to cut all of them out, and, it would take a long time to let trees to grow into a forest again in these regions . I consider that his saying” If wood is worth something it is worth planting.” the most astonishing one I have seen. Were he on the right side, then all government and the green organizations’effort to plant the trees is surely a waste of time. Is that the case? Woods are not only the climate regulator, it is the habitat of many animals, the source of so many things necessary for human. From these,I think he should not deny the importance of these wood.

The third mistake is found in this statement: “Or more likely it is just a natural cycle of no interest. Notice that no one much suffered much less died” which is his perspective towards the matter mentioned in these lines in the essay: “:Even in more temperate Europe, droughts have dramatically increased over the past three decades – the areas affected have gone up by a fifth between 1976 and 2006. The 2003 drought affected about 100 million Europeans and southern Spain might become desert in the coming decades. I have seen so many expressions saying there is no link between global warming and the drastic climate change, and this one is the typical one, but I, you and many loving the Earth, shall find it impossible to support this, as we know that the Earth has deteriorated, and at a rate that is out of the expectation of these people. I shall not dwell at that point as I think I have talked a lot on it.

The only good point I found is” We have our intelligences which make the resources we have more and more valuable all the time. So we can increase economic growth simply by using the same amount of resources but more intelligently.” I have a strong conviction that we are so intelligent in solving many problems of the world, but I am still doubtful whether economic growth shall occur if we have faced a severe shortage of resources, and there is still a heavily dependent on the traditional methods that would waste a large amount of them, in industries and any daily practice by man. He should bear in mind that the intelligent way of using resource is not simply the modification of the techniques, but to change the way that people think in production, and more important, the world. As far as I know, most people are not prepared to do so though the time remaining for us to adapt the new condition of world is very little before any disaster occur.

If he were allowed to read your blog, he could understand the biggest problem that human now face is, and could understand what the problem of his article is. He could also learn that the best solution is to create a society with new network of thinking and I hope he could support it.

I wish that you would like this article. I have no objection to make this article in public. I welcome any comment if you have.

Best regards,
william