Blog conclusions: Part 2

Putting biofuels into the wider context of climate change and fossil fuel depletion:

It seems that we will not be able to employ biofuels on a large scale until later; other technological ‘fixes’ for problems like climate change, such as geoengineering also come with their own portion of problems, where Mr Hallam suggests using geoengineering as ‘a backup plan’, which also needs time to fully develop (Tom Hallam’s blog). So what should we do in the meantime?

Primarily, I feel we need to stop shifting the responsibility on technology or the government to tackle these problems, but we need to all start taking responsibility. This includes making changes to the way in which we utilize energy, which is a more realistic short-term goal, according to Stern (2009) and Berners-Lee (2010) (see the bonus feature below). Reducing energy wastefulness of the industrial and energy-production sectors seems of primary importance, as these are the biggest emitters of GHGs at present (Stern, 2009). This can be done by making personal lifestyle-changing choices as well as industrial energy wastefulness reducing actions.

GHG emissions from the forest industry are the next in significance after energy generation and industrial emissions, so I agree with Sir Nicholas Stern that minimizing deforestation is of vital importance here also (Stern, 2009), when the political mechanism on dealing with the issue is found. Agriculture, being the next biggest contributor of GHG emissions, can already start halving its global emissions by employing the already-known strategies, such as the more efficient utilization of fertilizer, according to Berners-Lee (2010). This involves applying fertilizer in accordance with requirement (Berners-Lee, 2010).

However, since the reductions to global energy consumption would not be enough to sufficiently lower GHG emissions to avoid the potentially devastating effects of climate change and fossil fuel depletion, exploring alternative energy sources becomes very important in the medium term. Biofuel seem to have strong potential to contribute towards decreasing these problems, albeit to a limited extent.

*Bonus feature: what non-technological actions can we take as citizens?

Mike Berners-Lee in his book ‘How bad are bananas’ (2010), showed that ordinary citizens can also make a big difference to the amount of GHG emissions. He has calculated that a ‘carbon-conscious’ person in the UK could reduce their carbon dioxide emissions to just 100 tonnes in a lifetime of 79 years. This is a major reduction, considering that the calculations for a person with a carbon-intensive lifestyle amounted to 2000 tonnes, while the average person consumes 373 tonnes in a lifetime. This major energy reduction could occur by taking relatively small actions, such as reducing the speed of driving from 70 mph to 60 mph, which results in a ~25% carbon footprint reduction, according to Berners-Lee.

So now you have no excuse to drive faster to impress your friends!

Hope you enjoyed my blog and thanks a lot for reading!

Yours, Yulia Kolomiytseva