Today I had an interview with a Russian TV station. As I have studied Russian in the past, I greeted them lightly in Russian and then they asked me a series of questions about climate change for an hour.
To be honest, I was worried about how the discussion would go because I had never talked to Russian media before, but I agreed with them a lot. The most enjoyable part of the talk was "Social change and technology".
When asked how we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally, I said there are two solutions: recognising that the greenhouse gas reduction is possible and decarbonising technologies that don't exist yet. The first is to recognise that it is possible to reduce carbon dioxide emissions last year, when the Corona pandemic hit, based on the fact that carbon dioxide emissions were back to where they were 15 years ago, when we were told it was impossible.
In the UN's special report on limiting climate change to 1.5 degrees Celsius, even the most optimistic scenario estimates that we will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius and then somehow return to below 1.5 degrees. This is because we don't think we can limit carbon dioxide emissions in the first place by restricting our current way of life. Even though the corona pandemic went too far, the amount of people travelling by air could go back 15 years and still keep a lot of business and political activity online. So it's not that it's impossible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It's that we're postponing the problem to the next generation because it's not really relevant to today's adults. Maybe, if this online human activity is further restricted, we can continue to reduce our carbon footprint even in this generation.
Having said that, once we are free of the corona pandemic, there is a possibility that we will see a backlash of more human activity. We need to get back to 1.5 degrees Celsius from 2 degrees Celsius, so it's not enough to save energy and reduce emissions by using renewable energy. What is needed is decarbonisation technology to remove the carbon component from the air. The technologies that have been established are forestation and composting to keep the carbon in the ground biologically.
We intend to take our biogas activities even further by introducing blockchain to offset carbon. With the arrival of these blockchains and artificial intelligence, there are certain things that we will lose. For example, if we introduce blockchain and use it not only for biogas but also for coffee and cocoa payments, the work of financial services and the work of certifying origin and quality that used to be done by middlemen will disappear. This is the same as saying that the arrival of artificial intelligence and automation will take away the jobs of factory workers.
We cannot stop this technological revolution. The only thing we can do is to act faster to ensure that this new technology does not have a negative impact on human society. In the beginning, simple work in factories was not so pleasant. So it would be better if factory jobs were replaced by other, more enjoyable jobs. So the best thing we can do is to prepare society for more creative education, rather than simply teaching people to do repetitive tasks in a set amount of time in order to get ahead and work in a factory. Looking further ahead, we should also think about family planning to avoid increasing the population, as the number of people we need as workers will inevitably decrease. As I have written in previous blogs, when the truth that many people think is true is actually wrong, it is advantageous to disagree with the majority. Isn't that the case with population, for example? Many economists and politicians say that we need to increase the population, but maybe we don't need a large population.
In summary, we can't stop technology development, so we need to anticipate the social changes it will bring and change our education and attitudes to ensure that technology benefits us rather than being a problem.