Doom diary, day nine much delayed because I was too busy having much fun in the face of the apocalypse. Namely one of my best (only) friends, who was best man at my wedding, came up and we listened to and watched a lot of cricket – the first Ashes test more of that later.
I want to reflect on how our lives are drenched in fossil fuels and we don’t even see it. And the alternatives are almost always harder to do. I mean a simple one is simply the number of cars on the road in the UK and their size, any fuel efficiency gains seem to have been lost in heavier vehicles (Jevons Paradox etc), many of which famously are used mostly for short journeys, that could could be easily replaced by walking, cycling or public transport. But once you have the car, and its sunk costs, you want to use it gives you a sense of agency control which is of course usually spurious
And as I said to my friend, when I am Chief Fascist Dictator, any car advert will have to have a third of its time given over and given over to showing the vehicle being advertised stationary in a traffic jam, no voiceover no tricks to diminish it. Of course, a real fascist dictator would tell a car company that it wasn’t entitled to freedom of speech. Because a car company, unlike actual human being, can’t really die because its constituent parts will act the absolute worst to be sold off to another car company or military outfits
Anyway we went to a pub yesterday and watched the afternoon session and the beer was flowing and the big screen was on. And of course even in the UK, with a relatively decarbonized electricity system (there’s still plenty of natural gas: while we’re on that topic, interesting things afoot around Starmer at the moment sticking to the no new oil and gas licenses. We will see what happens to that once he becomes prime minister and maybe discovers that carbon capture and storage can definitely compensate for new oil and gas licenses. Oh, yes.
The other thing I saw today was a story about the huge marine heatwave off England and Ireland. And any day now, I suppose we’ll start to see pictures of dead fish on beaches, and local residents complaining of the smell followed no doubt by denialists saying “this is entirely normal and natural happens all the time.”)
So as we went today, to a nearby town, Dave drove in his internal combustion engine vehicle, we got to a pub. They had calorie amounts next to each item. And we amused ourselves by thinking about how many calories were in an ultimate veggie breakfast (we went for the medium one). And of course, the carbon footprint of everyday project products was something that people were thinking about labeling 15 years ago. And it was alongside the idea of personal carbon rationing, which has been dealt with fictionally in two excellent books, by Saci Lloyd, the Carbon Diaries 2015 and the Carbon Diaries 1017.
The problem I think, with labelling was twofold. One was, it wasn’t really clear that the game was worth the candle, that the existence of carbon labeling on products would drive consumer choice to send a market signal. The other ws, of course, that for almost all products, especially ones with multiple diverse ingredients and inputs. The assumptions involved in coming to a label are so vast and there are so many imponderables that the error bar would be probably as wide as the product itself. So it didn’t happen.
But basically, therefore in the same way that well, people can happily ignore the calorie counts on menus, and do trust me on this. But the carbon calculator, well, it literally doesn’t even exist. And I think in a society that took limits and its own future seriously, they probably would despite all of the imponderables and the barriers that I’ve just mentioned. Now here we are.
The next observation (btw, I’m sorry that today is quite so banal) is that having a plan and executing it can really get you a long way. So where I’m going with this or where I’m coming from with this is that and I discussed this with my friend Dave who made the point – on paper. the Australian team is just better. Better batters, better bowlers, better wicket keeper and yet the match was exquisitely close. And one factor – if you set aside the very sporting declaration at the end of day one, which I personally thought was the right decision – is the fact that England seemed to have done a lot more of their homework and had a plan of bowling and field placing for almost all of the Australian players. And yes sometimes they were making it up on the hoof and just being wild.
Whereas the Australians field placing, especially in the first English innings were lackadaisical, nonspecific, and, you know, the English got more runs than maybe they needed to. And the way the Australians approached, the final day of batting was quite odd. There was less aggression and a lot more hesitancy anyway
The point here is that talent – I mean, this is so banal as to be embarrassing – but talent on its own is not enough for sure should not be regarded as nothing, I mean, ultimately, the Australians won
And again, if we were serious about taking action on climate, there would be a lot more diligent local planning than there is. But if my aunt had balls she’d be my uncle. (Apologies to any trans rights activists that I’m offending there)
And it comes back to systems and signals and being able to send signals through a system so that a system is forced to modulate moderate transform its behavior and the signals do get sent tend to be either very slow or short, sharp and gone like a fist when you open your palm and regarded as a minor perturbation. in a functioning system.
And without going into too many details. I can’t really go into any but suffice to say, you can be really smart and really successful in the ways that society rewards in terms of high powered, well paid job and still be outstandingly ignorant of the basic facts around for example, what presentation with bony metastases actually means for someone’s longevity, I mean, this again, is the day of banality, perhaps, but you can have all the education you like and still basically be as thick as pig shit and be rewarded in the society. Because you do a “difficult”, important job. Well, ie one that helps make people richer, than you even richer, and a decent number of crumbs will fall off the table into your mouth. But there’s just a lack of common sense and understanding.
Final observation – oh my goodness, there are a lot of lonely people in the world. But just because they’re lonely, doesn’t mean you have to necessarily indulge them. You do, however, have to be polite, while being unambiguous. And I did that relatively well today, for once. So pat on the back…
Yeah, I don’t know if that’s 1000 words [it is!] but I kind of am embarrassed that you gentle reader have been subjected to it. But it was your choice, in our very free if imminently dead world…
marchudson.net 
I’m just sharing this as a supplement, for any readers who might not be aware of this historical context. I’m certain you’re familiar with gist of it. EXCERPT: ‘Overall, 50 per cent of carbon emissions come from 10 per cent of the wealthiest global population, while the poorest half are responsible for only 12 per cent of emissions. Africa has 17 per cent of the world’s population and 1.4 billion people — yet produces only 3.8 per cent of the world’s global emissions.’ https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/overpopulation-climate-crisis-energy-resources-1.6853542