Pirate's Cove

This is actually a good idea, since so many of the Rich Folks like to tell Everyone Else they need to comply to avoid climate apocalypse. Ones like Obama, John Kerry, China Joe, Kamala, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi. Ones like Leo DiCaprio, Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jeff Bezos, Harry and Meghan Markle, Prince Charles, Thom Yorke (Radiohead), Mark Ruffalo, Billie Eilish, Emma Thompson, and, goodness, the list could go on and on and on, couldn’t it? They always have Excuses, though, eh?

If you’re wealthy, reducing your carbon footprint is important

It was the summer of 2012 when sustainability scientist Kimberly Nicholas decided she couldn’t live like this anymore. She was attending a climate change conference in Austria, listening to talk after talk about how bad global warming was and how much worse it was going to get. All the while, Nicholas was thinking about all of the planet-heating carbon that she, like most other attendees, had dumped into the atmosphere by flying there.

“It really felt like a conference of doctors smoking cigarettes and telling our patients to quit,” Nicholas said.

But after a beer with a U.K.-based friend who took a train to the conference, Nicholas, who is American but lives and conducts research in Sweden, realized something: She could have done that, too. Since then, Nicholas has stopped flying within Europe, cutting her air travel emissions by 90 per cent in the process. She has also stopped eating meat and has gone car-free. To ensure she’s making lifestyle changes that will have the biggest carbon bang for their buck, Nicholas conducted peer-reviewed research on the subject. In 2017, she and her colleague Seth Wyens published a paper on the individual behavioural changes that have the greatest benefits for the climate. Topping the list? Flying less, followed by driving less and eating a plant-based diet.

Yet, most Warmists will refuse to do this, because that would be inconvenient. Plus, Other People should be forced to comply.

Nicholas has now expanded that paper into a book, Under the Sky We Make. A crash-course on why climate change is happening and how to fix it interwoven with beautifully written, witty anecdotes about a scientist’s personal journey toward sustainability, Under the Sky We Make pushes back — politely, but with science — against the narrative that individual actions make little difference to the climate. Rather, if you’re a wealthy person living in a wealthy country, the book makes a compelling case that your individual choices matter a lot. For the “carbon elite,” as Nicholas describes her intended audience, the decision to take fewer flights or install solar panels on your roof materially reduces the amount of carbon in the sky forever, not least because it can inspire similar behavioural changes amongst your peers. (snip)

That’s not what Nicholas is doing. Her message isn’t aimed at folks struggling to make ends meet, but at people making a middle-class income or higher who live in a wealthy country like the United States, Germany, or France. Far from a distraction, Nicholas argues that the climate impact of the carbon elite is something we need to focus on — individually and systematically. She points out that globally, more than two-thirds of climate pollution can be attributed to household consumption, and that the richest 10 per cent of the world population — those making more than $38,000 a year — is responsible for about half of those emissions.

Wait, back up

…that the richest 10 per cent of the world population — those making more than $38,000 a year — is responsible for about half of those emissions.

So, basically, a high percentage of those living in the 1st World.