Not just population growth in under developed countries.
ALL countries.
Seeing as it appeared that population control was never mentioned at this "conference" it was a complete waste of time.
KRudd would have been proud of it.

This is an extremely long article but to answer one of its questions the Paris deal basically means very little, but then, for those who want emissions reduced, it is better than nothing. The nations involved are legally required to nominate target cuts. They are not required to meet them, and there is nothing that can be done if they don't, apart from naming and shaming.

I'm not clear about external, independent monitoring of any progress that may be made in meeting those cuts, but this will be very difficult for some countries. A lot will depend on the individual country producing correct figures, and I doubt that's going to happen with China, or many of the other developing countries.

As has been said all along, even totalitarian regimes will be unwilling to inflict economic pain in their citizens simply over climate theory - over what may happen decades hence. They will be worried about their jobs right now.

That said, Paris was about the best that could be hoped for.

I predict a longed for international ETS, which after simply churning mucho plenty money, make a few carbon brokers filthy rich trading what could become the most traded and therefore the most valuable commodity in the world?

And given the absolute intangibility of atmospheric carbon, who can double check, who is reducing or offsetting anything real?

Yes technology if ever actually deployed, can solve this crisis. And that has to include large scale solar thermal. Cheaper than coal thorium. Biogas production and use on city wide scales and even larger broad scale oil rich algae farming/non food non arable land, ethanol production.

Broad scale algae farming/alternative oil production/self sufficiency, holding the most promise for a number of extremely viable reasons?

The first of which is the fact algae absorb 2.5 time their bodyweight in Co2 emission and therefore routinely ignored by politicians one and all!?

Another is, some types of algae are up to 60% oil, which is child's play to extract as ready to use diesel or jet fuel, with the ex- crush material, more than suitable for broad scale ethanol production! And under optimised conditions algae quite literally able to double that bodyweight/absorption capacity/oil content every 24 hours!

Let me predict the following outcomes.

Not much of any real behavior modification save an international ETS?

I mean there's as much as 140 billions per in the offing for savy operators who call themselves brokers, and tailor made for some big law firms, choosi, John bumpkin and a host of political retirees?

Real action would hurt a few, but contained within the fossil fuel industry, the very industry creating nearly all the problems, particularly coal?

We are far too reliant on coal, along with the ubiquitous wealthy(mostly foreign) operators who currently have us by the economic short and curlies?

Why attack the fossil fuel industry, or decarb the economy all while massively improving it and future economic outcomes; when we have so many untouched pensioners, the working poor, single mums, the Gay community to attack and have I missed anybody?
Rhrosty.

Paris was theatre of the absurd. We had people burning a litre of jet fuel every 25 km or so to get there under facilities 75% powered by nuclear. Then they vilified those same energy sources. Here in Australia we have power sector emissions increasing 1-2% a year yet the minister tells us Australia is a world leader in reducing emissions. It's demented.

I think the correct approach is tough emissions targets not quotas for favoured technologies like wind and solar. If per capita emissions stay around the 20 tonne mark then for every new Aussie native born or immigrant we'll know we're making it harder to achieve the target. I don't favour enforced energy frugality so long as the source is benign. Every adult should own a vehicle if they want and be able to use air conditioning in 45C weather.

In short start with tough emissions policies then technology and population choices should fall into line.

This could have been one of the most important and perceptive articles yet written on the whole climate change debate. The critique of the Paris climate talks is excellent and shows that Saral has a a clear and accurate understanding of the human realities abounding on this issue.

But then he leaves planet Earth and heads off into outer space when, two thirds of the way through his article, he discusses the political-economic system and advises of his support for his version (vision?) of eco-socialism. The reason why the Paris agreement is so weak and ineffective is because, as Saral describes, the leaders of the 190 countries who signed the agreement understand that their citizens demand access to clean water, good education and health systems, and above all jobs that will pay them an income with which they can rise up above poverty and enjoy a life closer to that enjoyed by developed nations. Yet the eco-socialist system that Saral espouses in the final third of his article dismisses these aspirations as being unimportant and implies they can be ignored in exchange for a reduction in fossil fuel consumption within developing countries

If Saral is accurate in the first part of this article (and I believe he is), then he has allowed himself to be blinkered by his own rhetoric and hopes in describing a new world political system which has absolutely no chance of being adopted except maybe in small unimportant countries similar to Cuba or Venezuela. Large countries with high and growing fossil fuel consumption levels such as India, China, USA, Indonesia and Nigeria will not implement eco-socialist economics until the economic well being of their populations reaches a sufficiently high level to satisfy their (the people's) reasonable expectations; and only when a high standard of living has been reached will populations stabilise and, as shown in Japan, Russia and Italy, begin to decline.

The most important thing to come out of the Paris climate talks is the US$20 billion R&D fund to be used to discover and commercialise new technologies needed to allow fossil-fuel consumption to reduce. For better or for worse, technology is our ONLY hope and this fund may find us the new ways of producing and storing renewable energy that the world needs to allow developing countries to achieve high standards of living without burning the same volumes of fossil fuels as developed countries have burnt over the last 200 years.

Bernie,

Lets put aside the issue of whether a frugal eco-socialism is likely to be achieved. The question for you is, do you accept that global capitalism is a growth based system? It seems you do, because you assume that India/China must continue on their path of 'development'. But then, if so, how do you think the climate crisis can be addressed? If you accept Saral's analysis re the scale of the challenge and the limits of renewables, what is your alternative way of decarbonising the growth/capitalist economy? If on the other hand you agree with Saral that growth must be stopped and rich world economies contracted, what is your proposal for how that would work within actually existing capitalism? How could you do so, and maintain social stability? I would like to know.

Jonathan

Jonathan

Growth, in its many forms, be it population, economic or whatever,
IS THE PROBLEM.
There are no easy fixes.

Good question, Jonathon: Is capitalism a growth based system? Capitalism (or free market economics as I prefer to call it) is undoubtedly a growth based system for as long as the population of a nation or region have a standard of living that they - the people - believe is lower than what they desire. They will strive to achieve a higher standard of living (which demands that their economy grows) until they are satisfied with their lot, at which stage they will realise like the Japanese and many Europeans that they have enough. When most people in the world have reached this level of wealth, comfort and understanding, then maybe we can embrace an eco-socialist economic-political system but we are still 50 to 100 years away from that stage.

I think, yes, capitalism is growth based. Both capitalism and growth are basically Ponzi schemes depending upon more and more and more ad infinitum.
Humans, being greedy, will attempt to keep these systems going until, probably sooner rather than later, we will all collapse in a heap due to chronic overpopulation and complete Environmental destruction.
And that`s being positive........

ateday, recent history suggests that national growth can and does stop for a number of reasons. In Russia, the dismantling of the USSR brought tough economic conditions which caused a reduction in births which fed the economic downturn, now compounded by low oil prices. In Japan, a very wealthy and aging society stopped having children and refused to accept migrants, so their economy is stagnating - no growth. In southern Europe, e.g., places like Italy, an aging society combined with low birth rates, poor borrowing decisions by the government and the GFC saw their economy reduce - negative growth - only to have a large migrant population arrive across the Mediterranean over the last 18 months which will boost growth but with lower growth in North Africa where most of the migrants came from. So there are conditions which, once reached, will lead to a capitalist society reducing its population, with growth mainly in the services sector but not in raw materials including fossil fuels.

Bernie, the chinese set about to deliberately downsize their population with harsh penalties for those who didn't conform including mandatory sterilisation, yet in spite of that produced the fastest growing economy the western world has seen, and just by lifting folks out of poverty?

And all we've ever needed to do likewise here; only stopped by brain dead Ideologues, who somehow believe, if others are to have more they will have less?

Nothing could be further from the truth. And we have never needed either growth or foreign capital, which in truth just adds to our already enormous and growing foreign debt! And loss of the national estate!? of course we should access foreign capital, but sans the tax avoiding foreign capitalist who bring with them their profit demands, which in turn service the foreign borrowings. We have never ever used self terminating thirty year investment bonds, which raises foreign capital minus the foreign owner.

Or maybe we have politicians on all sides, who are just too dumb to manage some worthwhile public business venture, like say a patently visionary Lee Kuan Yu?

Today China is the second largest economy, propping up the once mighty American economy with trillions; which had a post war period of unprecedented prosperity, created on the back of applied keynesian economics, only to see it dismantled before our very eyes, by fundamentally flawed extreme capitalism, moronic conservatives and equally mindless reaganism and thatcherism.

Why, the minimum wage stagnated for thirty odd years, and the harvest would rot in the fields by for migrant workers and slave wages, all while the nation hands over many billions in the so called farm bill!

Not for nothing is it writ large, a fool never learns!

Decarb the economy to create the new, most successful and growing economy tat attacks poverty, rather than those afflicted by it?

Fat chance, given who leads us and their real masters?

And don't be conned into believing the other side will do much different or even re-embrace Keynesian economics or the period of unrivaled universal prosperity it alone ushered in!?
Rhrosty.

Bernie,
No doubt some plateauing off may take place but there is already gross population growth, despite the increasing death tally from many causes, in places such as Syria, Egypt, the Middle East generally, Most of Africa and Asia, not to mention our own out of control growth rates.
The human plague is on the move and mass migration will become the future norm. This will lead to further overpopulation and environmental pressures which does not bode well.
Never forget it is a healthy Environment that keeps us alive.
Destroy that and we destroy ourselves.

Saral,
A great paper, but comments about the narrowness of the agreed text from COP21 is acceptable. It must be seen as just part of the huge task to move to a sustaiable world.

That larger task seems to be addressed well at the UN's sustainability projects. See:

https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/index.php?page=view&type=400&nr=2116&menu=35

where 17 goals are well presented.

One of these goals was the subject of COP21 - Climate Change.

So, Climate Change is but part of the overall sustainability problem. It was no fraud to not deal with the other 16 goals - many of which must be met to enable meeting COP 21 Climate Change objectives.

See this document
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/211617%20Goals%2017%20Partnerships.pdf

that clearly places COP 21 / Goal 13 in an appropriate context.

Reading all 17 goals reveals how truly massive and complex corrective action will be.

One minor but important correction to your paper. Some recent tenders have shown new renewable energy power complexes are cheaper to build than new coal powered electricity generation complexes.