I spend a lot of time skimming as many different articles as possible regarding the reduction of CO2 emissions. My main aim is to find individual articles or news items that prompt me to make a comment, but in this case, it’s the sum of many that drives this piece.

It is pretty much accepted that we need to reduce our CO2 emissions on a global basis for the good of our planet and for the good of our children and our childrens’ children. Scientists talk about it, governments talk about it, activists talk about it, and everyday people talk about it… and yet we are still not moving nearly fast enough.

If I take a poll on the typical message of the last 100 articles I have read, I would say that over 80% of them deal with things that we are not doing, or are not doing well enough, and we all know why this is. We like our current consumer-driven lives, and we are reluctant to change too much too fast. Our governments like being popular, and so are holding off from making unpopular but necessary decisions. And the fact is that noone agrees 100% on any of the proposed ways forward, so things are taking longer - much longer.

Here are some of the difficult questions that are being asked, and that we have to answer - some more important than others, but all of them reasons that genuine progress in reducing CO2 emissions is not being achieved:

  1. Should governments build more nuclear power stations when we know the downsides of atomic energy?
  2. Should governments promote solutions based on biofuels when we know the effects this approach could have on rainforest depletion, the cost of food, availability of food?
  3. Should we sacrifice beautiful views and build wind-generation plants wherever there is good wind, rather than just wherever everyone agrees they are not an eyesore?
  4. Should we buy hybrid cars that generate lower CO2 emissions in the short term, although they are not at all an environmentally friendly product?
  5. Should we expand our air traffic capabilites because air traffic brings revenues, which pay for progress in reducing CO2?
  6. Should we prevent owners of buildings of historical interest from insulating them properly or from installing solar panels simply because it may spoil their ‘outstanding beauty’?
  7. Should we stop buying food from overseas, even if the revenues generated from the purchase of this food supports poorer countries?
  8. Should we invest in storing CO2 emissions, even though this is a limited amount of storage space?
  9. Should we replace all of our bulbs with energy saving bulbs, even though they contain mercury and we have not yet worked out how to recycle them?
  10. If we do nothing else, does buying carbon credits really contribute to the reduction of CO2 emissions in the world?

I’m sure I will come up with more questions, but if we, and our governments, can just come to a consensus on these questions, we will have more direction and more momentum that we have today.