[Coral-List] Darwin Vs Darwin and Fossil Fuels vs Fossil Fuels

[David Medio]

Dearest colleagues,

These are fascinating exchanges both on whether (or rather how) right or wrong Darwin was and whether ANY country is doing much to move away from fossil fuels.

I suspect that Darwin may in fact, deep down, have believed that as an animal species we are simply not programmed for the long shot. The data on what we are doing to the planet is incontrovertible and yet we plod along relentlessly. 

As much as I like to believe that it is the way we do our accounting - as so well laid out by Peter Sale - on the costs of getting fossil fuels out of the ground that justifies the industry, I really think we are just ‘lost’ as a species more than anything else.

Here we are in the middle of a Pandemic in part caused by our total disregard of biodiversity, and much of the discourse seems to be on the fact that airlines won’t go back to the 2019 level of business for 4 years! The whole idea is that perhaps we shouldn’t revert to 2019 levels of both traffic and aircraft construction.   

Flying is cheap because of the way we do the maths: we don’t tax fuels etc etc

Apologies for the rant…

Dr David Medio
Independent Marine Scientist
Honorary Visiting Fellow, University of York
Email: davidmedio123 at gmail.com
Email: david.medio at york.ac.uk
Tel: +44 7739190968