A Green Degree Blog: New Angles On Sustainability

December 17th 2012

‘Chasing Ice’ Should Be This Generation’s Silent Spring; We’re Well Overdue

I’m just gonna come right out and say it. ‘Chasing Ice’ should be regarded as the vital wake-up slap in the face of our generation, akin to how Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ or the Brundtland Report’s ‘Our Common Future’ brought about a seismic change in the way we perceive and treat our planet.

I say this because ‘Chasing Ice’ has within it a message so clear in its meaning and power that you would be hard-pressed not to come out of this film feeling all manner of things; depressed, angry, confused (perhaps even feeling a trip to the Arctic Circle), but one thing that all involved will share is the profound urgency and blatant apparentness of what the planet is going through. And yes, it is climate change, and yes, it is because of us. You only have to check out the unfortunately leaked IPCC 5th Report due next year to see that the reputable if not conservative climate body now judges, with 99% certainty, that humanity has caused the warming experienced since 1950, and we ain’t about to stop anytime soon.

But what the film, and it’s incredibly dedicated team lead by the indefatigable James Balog manage to accomplish, is something science, and to a wider extent politics has abysmally failed at doing until [hopefully] now - communicate a warming planet in a way which the lay person can absorb and understand, with as little data as possible, whilst still retaining the necessary evidenced nature without alienating those who have become so out of touch with climate this and climate that.

The images and photography employed throughout are, for lack of a better phrase, tragically sublime, and bring to life something we as humans simply cannot connect with emotionally or psychologically, as the global scale and intensely terrifying nature of climate change is too much for our caveman brains to comprehend. Glaciers are undoubtedly one of our most apt indicators of atmospheric warming, fluctuating back-and-forth in relation to the current global state, and it is this attribute that ‘Chasing Ice’ brings to the forefront, with intricately orchestrated time-lapse photography, condensing 3 years of glacial change into 20 seconds of bitesized, jaw-dropping footage.

One of the most emotionally-heavy scenes of the film comes when the team experience the largest ever recorded calving event in history; a 75-minute long peeling off of skyscraper-sized icebergs and quaking bass-booms, as the Ilulissat Glacier in Greenland crumbles into nothing before the filmmakers eyes. This video was instantly shared and shared again around the internet, but it’s only when you go and actually see the film and watch James Balog present this nigh-on unbelievable force of nature to a crowd during a lecture, do you see the entire footage; Think Manhattan Island, but several times taller and infinitely more important collapsing into nothing, and you’re some of the way to understanding the scale. If there’s any scene in this film which wraps up the entire issue in one immense swoop, it is this one.

The film goes on to show us progressive retreats in all of the glaciers filmed by the crew, in the same time-lapsed beauty that is so accessible and yet scientifically crucial to the entire theme of climate change, and even throws in some absolutely crazy shots of Balog and his team rappelling into deep moulins, cavernous channels (or entrances to Hell) carved into glacial surfaces, directing meltwater into the depths of the glacier and out to the oceans. These things have to be seen to be believed, and should hopefully scare the living s**t out of you as much as they did me, and we’re only seeing more of them as time passes. Think of them as the glacier’s wounds, with the water flowing underneath only aiding in speeding up it’s demise.

Throughout the documentary, the determination and sheer will the entire crew demonstrates as they scale valley walls and brave well-below zero temperatures and hurricane winds to mount recording equipment is inspiring, and at times, weathering to watch. Nowhere else is this near-insane passion for filming the project, named the Extreme Ice Survey, more apparent than in James Balog, the man who started it all. Trained in Earth sciences and an avid photographer, the once-climate skeptic pushes his body to the absolute limit to get what is needed done, even if it involves several knee operations and some stem-cell repair afterwards. He even goes out on duty with crutches at one point, a both funny and poignant moment in the film.

His message is a simple one, and it scares even himself. We are changing the very chemistry and physics of our atmosphere, and within it our planet, and it is at the poles where this is most horrifyingly obvious. Documenting it and showing it to the world is his way of doing all that he can to make up for our wrongs as a society, and this comes through in the emotion experienced when talking about his kids futures, or finds that for a whole season, one of the cameras has been failing to capture any footage of worth. These moments make for sobering watching, but do more to show us just how damn obsessed with this project he is than any words could.

There is of course science and data in this film, not much, but enough to allow conclusions to be made and bold claims stated without being at risk of ‘cherry-picking evidence’, or some other denial trash. His team surveyed glaciers across Greenland, Iceland, Alaska and parts of North America, with backing from bodies such as NASA, the RGS, National Geographic, NCAR and more, as well as the odd talking head in the form of glaciologists and climate scientists; it’s safe to say that his credentials are not in question here. What is in question is why, when we have such clarity on the climate change issue, never before seen with such innovative and explicit footage, are we not doing something?

Only this past month there have been reports from all manner of business, government and science, such as PWC, BP, Exxon, the IEA, NOAA, DECC and so many more I won’t go on. What is also common amongst these is that they are NOT all lefty, liberal-green bodies which could be seen as ‘eco-radical’ and twisting things in their favour. This long list consists of oil and gas companies, government departments, independent think-tanks, reputable scientific bodies and long-running experimental studies. What more could we possibly need?

Well, I would like to think that ‘Chasing Ice’ may be onto something. The breakdown in communication between science and the public is lamentable, and likely ranks as science’s greatest failure, but it is one that can be remedied. We’ve had game-changing paradigm shifts in policy and scientific debate before, almost on a decadal basis, with of course, Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ sitting pretty at the top of them all, and we did something globally significant because of them. We’re well overdue another one however, and I wholeheartedly believe this is it; and my God, do we need one right now. Climate change is the biggest risk we’ve ever faced, ever even conceived of, and it affects literally every facet of life in our civilisation as we know it, and yet we go on as though it’s all a lie, it will go away if we ignore it, that everything will be alright in the end.

It’s a fantastic skill of ours to be ignorant in the face of mountains of evidence so stoically and nobly, but we’ve run out of time. Some of you may not think some ice melting here or there matters to anybody, and that you can’t judge something as big as climate change off of some footage gathered by a crazy man, but you couldn’t be more wrong. Glaciers are our best medium through which to experience global warming, and James Balog recognises and captures this tragic reality in a way which is not only beautiful and public-centric, but which hammers home our disconnection with nature more powerfully than any other film, book, report or natural disaster ever has. I have only one question…

…Why the hell isn’t it playing in more cinemas?! This should outsell Avatar three times over, and then some, but alas, maybe I’m now being the ignorant one.

Posted at 11:05am and tagged with: glaciers, Chasing Ice, james balog, ice survey, science, climate change, warming, global, ice, film, documentary, poles, polar, geography, geology, photography, cinema,.

October 31st 2012

Reconciling China & The US Over Climate Change, Impossible? Just Improbable

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As part of my seminar work at university recently, we were tasked with acting out a mock debate between China and the United States, as though we were their respective leaders attempting to form an international agreement on climate change and emissions, all COP-like. Three of us were labelled China (me) and the other three the US, and for two weeks we prepared our sides of the argument with the ideas of fairness, equality and discussing topics which are rarely touched upon in the real world.

Now, our goal was to duke it out for 20 minutes or so, each bringing out our biggest guns on the topics of economy, climate policy, energy and poverty, with the ultimate goal of first debating who bore the better position on the global stage, before forming a bilateral framework to bring the rest of the world on board. Easy task eh! But fun nonetheless.

Our lecturer, an environmental barrister who has seen his fair share of global conventions and knows how they work and (mostly) don’t work, and was keen that we focus on one or two key attributes of a fair debate on this topic. Firstly, historical emissions, the idea that a figure can be derived to demonstrate how much greenhouse gas emissions had been accumulated over time by each industrialising country, generally from 1850 until the present. Secondly, the intent to damage, or mens rea, and associated legal issues such as liability were to be included, as these are generally ignored or swept under the rug in the conventions we’ve come to know and hate.

And who do you think holds the crown of the highest historical emissions between the US and China? Why the US of course, by a margin of about 220,000Gt of CO2, maxing out at ~340,000Gt, almost 30% of the entire worldwide past emissions accounted for. China on the other hand is responsible for around 9% of the share, and much of that has been in the last 30-40 years of rampant coal consumption and becoming the ‘manufacturer of the world’, a moniker the US has had much use out of. When you consider what we know of climate science and carbon dioxide today, that fantastically large proportion of emissions resulting from the States puts pretty much everything else into perspective, not least China’s emissions.

China has tried to use this against the US before, claiming that they should pay up for all the dirty CO2 and the years of unabated, joyful economic growth it brought with it; if China is to be expected to slow growth to mitigate climate change, then the US should compensate all those who have and will be affected by that 30% historical share, i.e. the entire planet. When they brought this demand to the table, the US used their secret weapon to shoot it down instantaneously, quickly brushing it out of sight before anything serious came of it. By claiming ignorance effectively, the US leaders merely stated that they could not have possibly known fossil fuel burning was damaging the environment as we now know, and to ask them to pay compensation for anything earlier than, say, the 1980s would be ludicrous. This is despite the fact that we as a society knew these emissions were damaging at least decades earlier, and certainly by the early 1970s, when the wider scientific community began studying the effects of carbon dioxide and other pollutants.

Posted at 10:01am and tagged with: us, china, energy, climate, COP, debate, money, global, climate change, science,.

September 7th 2012

Carbon-Capture & Storage: Why All The Bother?

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I’m sure many of you have, at some point in your journeys through the energy and renewable world heard the term ‘carbon-capture and storage’, or more simply ‘CCS’, but might not have known fully what it was, how it works or why it is being given such prominence in modern policy discussion. Well here’s my attempt at giving you a brief but hopefully in-depth look at the technology and the science surrounding some of the obsession associated with big oil companies, the Republicans and general economists.

CCS does mostly what it says on the tin; it aims to capture carbon or CO2 from the fumes and emissions given off by dirty industry, such as oil, coal or gas burning power plants, usually by grabbing the stuff out of the air with scrubbers or biological substances, before condensing it down into liquid form which can be easily transported. This lovely carbon-ooze is subsequently pumped elsewhere, generally far from the source, and deep into the Earth’s crust, within depleted fossil fuel reserves or geologically appropriate formations, such as aquifers or rock beds.

Via this technology, it is greatly hoped that carbon emissions from our already well-established dirty fossil industries can be hugely reduced, without radical changes in attitude and infrastructure required. We’ll see why this is not the grand idea is sounds to be.

The whole science of capturing the CO2 has been relatively well-tested on a small scale, with multiple projects spanning from the start of the millennia, such as simple scrubbing of power plant chimneys. However, capture on a larger scale has proved a much more ambitious and expensive venture, with price-tags commonly running into the hundreds of millions if not billions just for the initial CCS stages. Examples of these include projects in Denmark through Vattenfall, pilot capture facilities in Sweden and Norway and greater Europe, with plenty more in the planning stage (http://www.bgs.ac.uk/qics/). Unfortunately practically all of the projects currently in play, whether they’re still in planning or near-completion, only involve the ‘capture’ part of CCS, merely test-beds for working out the kinks in collecting the stuff for subsequent storage, with the resultant carbon being released into the atmosphere once the experiments are complete. Only eight (in 2011) CCS plants were actually injecting CO2 back into the ground worldwide, with at least three of them acting purely as partners to deep-sea offshore drilling platforms, collecting their waste and pumping it back into the seabed, to no real net gain to society.

As for the larger scale storage aspect of CCS, nearing 100 projects are in place since mid-2012, but current financial and political woes have all but put the majority of these on the shelf, no doubt for the indefinite future, seen as far too expensive, risky and a distraction from the real issue at hand. Specifically, the EU recently slashed its fund for CCS from a prospective £4.8bn to just £1bn, with finalised figures coming in a month or so, meaning that the 12 projects originally guaranteed funding are no in serious jeopardy. Similar issues are being experienced by the industry globally, as the idea of big, high-risk, high-dollar energy resources such as nuclear rapidly fall out of favour with both the public and professionals.

This however does not seem true in the US, where the [unfortunate] boom in shale gas extraction has fuelled great interest in ways to reduce the already disgustingly damaging practice of fracking and shale prospecting. Shell has been a major player in this region of the world, jumping on the natural gas bandwagon without hesitation, setting up shop in Alberta, where one of the world’s largest reserves of shale gas resides. Just google this yourself and switch to images and before long you will understand why myself and many others recoil at the very idea of extracting this utter mess. Anyway, back on topic.

Posted at 9:48am and tagged with: carbon, CCS, capture, storage, oil, coal, gas, fossil, fuels, industry, climate change, risk, fields, power plants, energy, dangerous, science, technology, money, CO2, wind, solar, renewable,.

June 29th 2012

Bow Down & Worship A New Religion: Environmentalism

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Well this is certainly the next step of many in what is becoming a sinister and highly damaging movement against the entire environmental sector and it’s advocates, one which threatens in all seriousness to completely derail the impressive progress made over the recent decades; environmentalism is now being branded as ‘a new religion’. Yep, you read that right, if you’re green, you’re simply a sheep following the crowd into the abyss.

When I first read of this moronic idea a good few months ago, I wrote a blog piece on how enviromentalists were akin to satanists in their worship of Mother Earth, and that any who avidly follow it to the point of speaking out against the normal flow of things should be ignored on the grounds of simple heresy. Back then, I wasn’t too angered by the premise, and I actually couldn’t help but laugh at the entire ordeal, which to me felt like a badly visualised attempt at attacking the science of sustainability and the environment, which bombed like a lead balloon. I’m sure many of you who knew of it at the time laughed along with me, and didn’t give it much of a second thought.

However, history has come back around, and this time it carries some real bile and the potential to cause extreme disruption to the entire green movement. Anti-environmentalists and climate deniers have spewed some wonderfully abstract and pointless words in the past in their vein attempts to collapse the industry before it gets fully rooted, and for the most part the wider public has been sane enough to see through these attacks and to focus on the bigger picture, where science and evidence prevail, not the blind punches dealt by the radical haters. Think of the Heartland Institute or fossil fuel lobbies - not the smartest of cookies, but rich enough to fool us into thinking it.

So then, what about environmentalism as a religion? That could actually mean something, something powerful, and the idea truly angers, scares and deeply worries me.

Religion as we know it is the following of a deity or faith, not often based upon evidence or solid fact, but something higher, a sometimes irrational belief that our world and lives are affected at every level by a force outside our control. This faith is stronger than any science can even attempt to rationalise, and can grow like wildfire into the wider public through simple preaching of the belief, with any counter argument shot down in the blink of an eye.

Now, we combine this with environmentalism, the crucial and utterly scientific understanding of our natural surroundings, how we consume and use them, what direction they’re headed in, how we can sustain them and simply put, how completely important they are in our everyday life. This field covers everything from sustainability, to renewable energy, climate change and food security, all of which are issues constantly debated on the global stage and described as the very defining problems of our time.

In recent years, environmentalism has grown in popularity and political attention greatly, but it has divided a good amount of people at the same time. Climate science, model simulations and renewables in particular have come under constant fire from the other side for being unreliable, expensive, unconstitutional and even backwards, all the while we continue to pump out carbon and pollute our only home. I for one consider myself a relatively open advocate of this movement, although the word movement degrades environmentalism to a simple fad, and am a complete atheist, which I should note does not come into this subject, which shouldn’t involve religion at all.

By placing environmentalism well within the realms of religion, you instantly take away all of the endeavour and scientific rigour that accompanies it. There is a clear divide - environmentalism is purely scientific and relies entirely on evidence from multiple fields coming together under one umbrella. Religion is purely faith-based; evidence does not come into it. Herein lies the crucial issue with this comparison. In effect, environmentalism is reduced from an evidence battle, to one which must be believed on faith alone, despite the mountains of data available.

No longer can those who speak out for the science side be seen as professionals or well-informed individuals, but instead as radicals and extremists who are akin to religious zealots, who everyone quickly learns to ignore. The public will become accostomed to viewing new advances in the environmental sector as nothing but a faith in science, and soon popularity will rapidly drop off the cliff.

Alongside this, those who come out as against environmentalism will feel secure and protected by those around them harbouring the same feelings. No more will climate deniers and skeptics be viewed as uninformed or illiterate, but as individuals with faiths in other things, a heretic if you like to the new green religion, and this is a much safer place to be than outside of the scientific crowd.

This entire idea is driven by the one thing that is becoming more and more evident as time goes on; those against sustainability and science are rapidly becoming the outsiders, and must be increasingly vocal in their attempts to shout us down and make themselves known. Branding their enemy as a religion is by far their most inventive way to do this, and proves their desperation in quelling it once and for all.

What’s more worrying is that some major names have begun to think and talk along these lines, including the very creator of the Gaia Hypotheis, James Lovelock, someone who could be viewed as a founding father of the green ideology from which environmentalism has stemmed. Even if his and others mention of religious comparisons was purely incidental and meant as a warning rather than a message, it is not a stones throw away to warp their words into evidence that even these great thinkers have cottoned onto the premise.

We cannot let this idea latch on and multiply like a virus, that is the simple truth. This could be far too damaging to everyone involved in the field and, to humanity as a whole. You may think I’m being over dramatic there, but think of it this way. Bringing the environment to the forefront of our thoughts is more crucia than ever, and finally it may actually be gaining some serious momentum, even despite the failings at Rio+20. To let it be ripped apart and have its reputation tarnished because it was morphed into a ‘faith’ and not a science would be, in my eyes, one of the greatest injustices committed against our intelligence in our entire history.

Environmentalism can be many things; a political agenda, a global convention, an individual hobby or a simple ideology, but to compare it to any form of faith, religion included, is just plain insanity. I almost can’t swallow it.

Posted at 10:26am and tagged with: Climate, Science, Religion, Faith, Environmentalism, Evidence, Carbon, Renewable, Gaia, Mother earth, Worship, Heretic, Politics, Rio+20, Green, Denial, Climate change, Sustainability,.

May 9th 2012

Carbon PPM Hits A New High, & Natural Gas Is Replacing Coal - This Seems Strange?

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Coal has always been the number one fossil fuel in our society’s list of burnable sunlight, which of course it simply is, which also begs the question why is solar taking so long to kick off? Sorry, going off on a tangent here, I think I’ll reserve that for another post. Back to the main subject.

Coal is by far the most worrisome and dirty of the fossil fuels, although its brother oil is not to be easily beaten in that respect, and has been utilised for centuries to provide electricity to our lights and heat our homes. Throughout this time, a frankly astounding amount of CO2 has been emitted into the surrounding environment and atmosphere, warming our planet and screwing with multiple climatic, biological and ocean-atmosphere interactions and feedbacks which we’re only just beginning to experience.

Only recently, the Mauna Loa carbon-detection research station in Hawaii, sitting high atop the largest volcano in the world, measured an atmospheric ppm value just shy of 400; that’s a massive figure. In fact this is the highest recorded atmospheric carbon content in the history of measurements, indicating that despite our best, and sometimes admirably successful attempts at culling emissions, it’s still doing its own thing.

This of course can be explained by a few important factors, most predominantly the rise of the BRIC nations, Brazil, Russia, India and China, who are pumping out carbon at a rate equivalent to the peak of our Western expansions, with many more countries joining them. Alongside this, the simple physical fact that carbon sticks around in the atmosphere for at least half a century, means that a good portion of the continued increase we are seeing is due to pollution spewed out within the past several years - even if we cut carbon emission to zero as of this moment globally, it would still keep going for up until past 2020.

So I find it strange that, in reading an article recommended via Grist today, and with the knowledge that natural gas, that lesser-of-two-evils fossil fuel (or perhaps not) is taking the energy world by storm, we still haven’t fully grasped this ‘green’ concept.

Natural gas has been becoming increasingly popular in many developed nations who are trying to curb their carbon emissions through the cutting back of coal and oil burning, as it is not only just as readily available, but technically, and I emphasise technically, emits less carbon than coal when burnt. This is the reason that countries are adopting a more natural gas-orientated energy mix in future policy, as they see it as a way of securing stable energy sources at a reduced cost to the environment and wallets.

Posted at 11:02am and tagged with: oil, natural gas, coal, fossil fuel, energy, US, NOAA, EPA, emissions, carbon, methane, science, burning, Environment, global warming, climate change, policy, BRIC, ppm,.

May 5th 2012

The Unfortunate Truth Of The Heartland Institute: It Knows How To Manipulate

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I frankly wasn’t surprised when I saw yesterday the latest plans in a long line of atrocious climate-deinal and truth-twisting projects carried out by the Heartland Institute of America. They’re well known by now for their incredibly biased and simply wrong (on many levels) views on man-made climate change, and have produced some fantastic propaganda on the subject for decades.

Only a few weeks ago, the Institute was found to be being funded heavily by some pretty big names in the oil/gas industries, manufacturing and health sectors, such as GSK and GM, a dirty secret which was revealed when a leaked document containing beneficiaries and funders was obtained, admittedly rather unscrupulously by a respected climate scientist, and let out into the wild of the media and public. In fact, this event comes into play in their defending of this new project later discussed.

This time however, it’s gone just a little too far in my books. Heartland, obviously feeling that a much more to-the-point and alarming approach was needed rather than simple climate-bashing and data skewing as it has been in the past. So they went for what you see above.

Billboards sprung up across Chicago portraying images of well-known mass murderers, madmen and tyrants, with some of the worst including Osama bin Laden and the Unabomber, with a simple message alongside (translated by me for the true meaning) - “these men believe(d) in climate change, so if you do too, you’re just as bad as them”.

So there you have it folks, if you’re a believer of the well-evidenced, globally backed, clear and present danger of climate change, be it man-made or natural, you’re just a psychopath worthy of company of these despicable men. Nice eh?

According to the Institute’s dubious press release, they are perfectly just in their actions, not only because the majority of those climate change believers are in the fringes of a radical society, but that the very climate scientist who ‘stole’ the funding documents from them recently and which I described above has broken the rules; therefore, it;s time for Heartland to break the rules a bit more. They were always such law-abiding people anyway weren’t they?

May 1st 2012

The Media At It Again - Wind Turbines Cause Climate Warming Now?

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Isn’t the global media just wonderful at blowing things massively and unprecedentedly out of proportion, when the prospect of a big story is just too tantalising to exaggerate.

This time its victim is renewable energy and the wind industry in particular, which recently came into the public eye when a study undertaken by the University of Albany, with Liming Zhou at the head, produced results which suggested large-scale wind farms can affect nighttime temperatures in the local area. Their data seemed to show an increase in temperature by roughly 0.7˚C over the last decade in Texas, explaining this oddity via the influence the turbines can have on air currents and mixing. As they turn, they draw hot air from above down into the colder air below, therefore slightly increasing the temperatures in the region.

Now, they go on to say that this effect is ‘local and small compared to strong year-to-year changes’ and again repeat at the end of the Guardian article, that this is by no means a paper advocating the blocking of wind energy, and that it could easily have positive effects, especially considering this is just one of only two studies ever carried out on the subject, and over just 9 years in one area. The scientific method demands much more information than this.

So in essence, this paper is merely saying that the highly localised region of Texas where these huge, and I repeat huge, wind farms have been erected, seems to experience some increased nighttime temperatures, but only on a small-scale and of much much less amplitude than usual climate variations. An interesting, but by no means worrying or alarming result, but should definitely be considered in future wind policy.

Unfortunately, the media have decided to spin the story a little bit, with science as the tried and tested victim. Outlets such as FOX news and the Telegraph have erupted headlines on the subject, generally following along the lines of ‘Wind Farms Cause The Global Climate To Warm’ and that sort of thing, effectively cherry picking some of the words used in the original study, and adding their own in the process.

Posted at 11:01am and tagged with: grist, wind, climate change, global climate, Zhou, wind farm, renewable, energy, climate, warming, temperature, science, technology, media, Fox news, telegraph, stupid, anger, dumb, society,.

April 30th 2012

Has Climate Change & Sustainability Become A Boring, Out-Of-Touch Subject For Us?

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Of late, I have been beginning to question the effectiveness of our current communication of climate change issues and all their depressingly apparent relations, and whether the efforts of a global population are actually getting through to those people that really matter. Simply put, is the whole science of man-made climate change just too boring and dire for most people to care for; or is the wonderful buzz-word of the 21st century thus-far, sustainability, actually the trigger for snores all around.

I say this primarily because of the reactions some of my close friends have had to my blog and the issues I try and communicate to them within it, as well as when talking to them directly. Although many have commented on how professional or fancy it looks (sorry to blow trumpets, I honestly think they’re being kind) which is all well and good, but it’s their next comments which worry me - all but one has gone onto say that, it’s basically too damn boring, or ‘sciency’ and rarely worth their time reading for them to invest any effort in checking the actual substance of the blog out. Hmmmm.

Now admittedly, this is likely because the majority of them do not study, or have a real interest in anything to do with environmental science or the state of global energy needs, not least to the level I do, but I am always trying to write my posts and my thoughts down in the most informal and chatty of ways, so as to entice the broadest audience I can. Maybe this just isn’t the case however, and my posts are in fact too wordy or niche for people lacking a knowledge of the topics to get involved. By the way, if this is the case, please please please comment on my blog, send me advice or criticism and help me improve the thing, I’m feeling lonely here.

Moving away from my simple little blog, I remember a post I did a while back surrounding the US youth and their commitment to sustainability issues (I am moving away from it, I promise), in which multiple studies had been carried out assessing this very subject. I was surprised to see that the large majority of US residents were well aware of the problems of climate and concerned, in some cases deeply, about the consequences.

What I was more surprised about however was a study by the Chicago AP on students, or the ‘millennials’, those of us born straight into the climate debate. Here they found that this group has become increasingly un-invested in the environment and concern has been dropping off, with many seemingly admitting defeat or turning their heads to other, more accessible issues. One of the most convincing answers I’ve seen explaining this study, and one I share completely, is that the combined media coverage, doomsaying individuals and countless numbers of studies released daily by the academic circles is literally drowning some people.

Students just cannot handle the multiple directions the information is coming from, and have become fatigued by climate and the science, shutting down their emotional response to it. This is highly worrying, and was brought home to me when my friends commented on my blog, and is the factor I feel most at risk of derailing the entire sustainability effort if nothing is done.

Climate communication has always been one of the biggest issues faced by policy-makers and governmental bodies, but now more than ever I feel we have the technology to elevate it to a global scale. Social media. With the immense social-sphere acting as a voice and a catalyst for literally billions of people around the world, socialising sustainability is pretty much the only option we’ve got left which can be effected quickly and efficiently.

We’ve tried fancy policy, involving public groups in the debate, banging on about how inherently dangerous, petty, greedy and out of control our society is, and last but not least attempting to get each and every country on the same side for many global conventions, and yet emissions still peak and fossil fuels burn.

I think it’s now time for a social, digital approach. Rio+20 is taking the lead, with it’s Social project, the first of its kind, and many more need to follow in its footsteps. If we can, as a global society, empower a network of ‘millennials’ to rekindle their interest in saving this little blue planet, perhaps through the use of a social network style comparing of company CSR or individuals, combined with a platform where effective dialogue can be introduced. This may be a rather grand and fleeting idea on my part, but it has almost got to that stage where we require more than just a kick up the ass. Let’s hope climate tipping isn’t that boot.

Posted at 1:14pm and tagged with: opinion, climate change, sustainability, energy, global, society, humans, boring, youth, millennial, science, technology, personal, fatigue, fossil fuel, students, communication, policy,.