2000W

Global warming is one issue in which I am particularly intrigued. In much the same way that the Cold War was one of the defining threats for the second half of the 20th century, I believe that global warming is likely to be one of the few, if not the, key theme of the 21st century. As Ross Garnaut depressingly wrote in his White Paper for the Australian government, global warming is a truly diabolical policy problem without easy solutions.

Many talented writers and thinkers have written a lot about the challenges of global warming. A lot has also been written about the need to reduce our carbon output on a personal basis. One question that doesn't seem to get nearly as much attention however, is how much carbon, or how much energy, we should be using in total.

Reading through the many suggestions on the web, along with Gore's advice on what we should be doing (changing light bulbs, growing vegetables, winterizing houses, car pooling etc), I can't help but thinking fine, these are good suggestions that ought to be done, but are they enough? More simply, if everyone in the developed world actually did this, would it actually make any difference? Sure, at some level there would be less carbon going into the atmosphere, but would it be enough? Would it be anything more than a statistical blip on an otherwise straight line of increasing carbon dioxide concentrations?

Moreover, could some of these suggestions actually be confusing people about the scale of change that will actually have to take place? Looking over some of the facts involved: that passenger cars are a substantial proportion of CO2 output in the transportation sector, the fact that residential heating and cooling requires enormous amounts of power seems to me to demand a more systemic and structural response than simply growing vegetables in your back garden. In fact, maybe everyone having their own backyard with all the associated logistics and transportation thereby required, is a key part of the problem.

The 2000 Watt society seems to me to be a step in the right direction. At least they have come up with a target level of energy use, rather than a list of suggestions on how to reduce your carbon footprint. Are there better measures? I'd really love to hear about alternative proposals. Perhaps it would be better to simply measure the total carbon output, but a few issues with that approach come to mind.

The implications of coming up with a energy use target are particularly interesting. How would you live within 2000W on a daily basis? It really isn't much energy at all when you think about it: using a single 75W light bulb for 10 hours equates to 750W for just a single light source. What would be the effect on society and the economy? How could we adapt our cities, transportation links, food production systems to achieve the necessary power reductions? These are some of the topics that I think are particularly fascinating.