CO2

After watching the video “The age of stupid” which is about a man living in the devastated future world of 2055, looking back at old footage from our time and asking: why didn't we stop climate change when we had the chance.

Created in 2009 the statement that stood out to me was “The past is littered with the bodies of people who had stuff worth stealing.”

This makes me think that it is human attitude that is holding us back and makes me question if it is possible to change the world, to work together and be less wasteful and everyone having their basic needs met. A humans five basic needs is food, water, shelter, warmth and clothing. What I think are other needs is that every person should have safety, education, sanitation and healthcare.

Thinking about key moments in history those in power seek more wealth, this thought links back to my selected quote. Our current world is run by greed, this is human nature to desire and become more, none want to have less than what they have. The difference between those who have got and those that have nothing is large, a lot of this difference comes down to the wealth of a country.

Looking at the size of a country, their population and the carbon emissions I found this helpful interactive map (http://www.carbonmap.org/#intro ). Which allows you to change the size of the countries from the size of a standard map to the size representing carbon emissions in the forms of extracting, burning and consuming. This also allows us to compare the emissions to the increase of population and to the change in emissions.

Convectional world map

Below the conventional map has been changed to show a comparison between the increase of population shown by the use of colour and the emissions that is represented by the change in size of the countries.

What really interests me about this image is looking at Africa, where there is the most population, there are almost no emissions, and this is due to it being a poor country. Again linking to the idea that the rich countries have more control.  What I think is interesting is that you expect areas with more population to have higher emissions.

This next map looks at the usage of CO2 per person, shown by colour, and the size of the countries have been changed in size to represent their consumption.

The size of the United Kingdom is considerably larger than its actual size on a conventional map. Which shocked me, as I didn’t relies the size of the contribution The United Kingdom was consuming particularly as we are a small country in comparison to others.

I believe that due to the constant warning to global warming has desensitised people who have not personally been effected eg no droughts or floods, when things are seen on the news we are initially concerned, but our memories fade, and it becomes a event that once happened and is now never thought about.