Ice Care started as a ‘civil movement’ (as someone put it in a meeting), by a couple of friends who like to climb, but know little about climate change.
Soon enough this naïf attitude was cornered and proved unsustainable in the long term.
Tiago Bettencourt suggested I would prepare a tutorial about global warming – with all due right.
Recently I came across Zé Diogo Quintela (rather famous Portuguese humorist) on the street. We’ve known each other for ages, so I invited him to become the first official Ice Care ambassador. He throws a couple of intelligent questions at me – which is quite normal for someone publicly endorsing a cause.
- ‘Is it really happening? Isn’t our climate naturally variable? Why is it different now? Is it really serious?’
- ‘can we really do something? Switching off mobile chargers has any effect whatsoever?’
Natural and healthy skepticism, I would say – very common to the majority of people, like me and him, who need a veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery good reason to decline the comforts of ignorance.
By then I’d realize the urge to explain the dimensions of the problem to everyone (like me and him….).
In London I found an excellent book by Bill McGuire - '7 years to change the planet’. Based on that book, I’m preparing a sequence of ppts with Q&A according to the following issues:
1. What is happening already?
2. Is it already too late?
3. What is Ice Care doing?
4. What can I do?
In the meanwhile, here are some ideas that can be applied immediately:
. Eat less meat! – we’ve exhorted the guilt upon cars and planes, but ‘…the meat industry conspires to generate an astonishing 12% of global emissions […]almost as much as all cars, trains, boats and planes put together.’
. Switch off unused equipments! – if everyone in the UK ‘…made sure that the appliances were properly switched off when not in use, we could do away with 2, or maybe 3, of the 10 new nuclear power plants currently in the planning stages.’
1 comentário:
Olá!
Pouco sei deste vosso projecto. Na verdade estou um pouco curioso. Acima de tudo, curioso em saber se há alternativa? Se há salvação para este mundo, no que diz respeito ao degelo macivo que acontece nos glaciares? As últimas informações que consegui foram inclusivamente contra a "tendência" de colocar na produção e emissão de gases que causam efeito de estufa a culpa pelo aquecimento global. Mas como dizem esses mesmos cientístas, quem estiver contra a "tendência" é excluído - referindo-se ao IPCC, o International Panel for the Climate Change/Painel Internacional para as Alterações Climáticas das Nações Unidas. E inclusivé falam de alegados "melhores cientistas do mundo" que não o são, mas que assim foram apelidados por estarem a favor dessa tendência, e fazem parte do IPCC.
O CO2, o Dióxido de Carbono é resultado do aquecimento global. E não é o aquecimento global o resultado do Dióxido de Carbono.
Para terminar: Comemos hoje menos carne para bixar as emissões. Amanhã (futuro) teremos de comer menos vegetais para baixar as emissões também??? O Dióxido de Carbono é resultado também do metabolismo das plantas, como todos sabemos, ao transformarem energia. Não deveríamos começar por evitar os excessos e as excentricidades?
Enviar um comentário