![]() ![]() Global carbon emissions have risen to their highest levels in history. But there is little evidence that this will be possible on the timescale required. To proponents of green growth, new innovations such as electric cars will help “decouple” growth from carbon emissions and allow humans to live a life of plenty within the limits of the planet. Growth, the process by which a country increases the amount of goods and services it produces, is supposed to raise people’s wages and provide governments with an income that can be invested into public services such as schools and hospitals. According to the idea of “green growth”, whose adherents include the World Bank and the White House, so long as the right policies are in place, societies will be able to enjoy endless growth while reducing their carbon footprint. Subsidised by governments and promoted by the automotive industry, they fit smoothly with the economic ideas that guide how policymakers think about reducing carbon emissions. By 2040, according to the International Energy Agency, the global demand for lithium will have increased more than fortyfold.Įlectric cars improve on the status quo without transforming its rapacious use of resources. As the demand for electric vehicles grows, the mining and refining of their components will intensify, further damaging natural ecosystems. The 14kg of cobalt that prevent the car’s battery from overheating have probably come from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where cobalt mines have contaminated water supplies and soil. Then consider that the battery of an electric car uses 8kg of lithium, likely extracted from briny pools on South America’s salt flats, a process that has been blamed for shrinking pasturelands and causing desertification. ![]() Its carbon footprint is around three times smaller than its petrol equivalent, and unlike a regular car, it emits none of the greenhouse gases that warm the planet or noxious fumes that pollute the air. Sleek and nearly silent, it is a good example of how far the world has progressed in fighting the climate crisis. (Are they actually armed? Only he knows! Shiver.C onsider the electric car. That quote was from the Times' review, and Slate's Ron Rosenbaum recently revisited the book within the chilling context of Russian president Vladimir Putin's decision to put his country's nuclear bomber fleet back in the air. We all face the prospect that, if Russia were ever attacked, its strategic nuclear warheads could be launched by a computer system designed and built in the late 1970s. It would be a brave officer, adds Smith, who, having been cut off from his superiors in the Kremlin, could ignore the advice of such a supposedly foolproof system. All that is then needed is final human approval from a command post buried deep underground. If the answer to both questions is “yes” then the computer will conclude that the country is under attack and activate its nuclear arsenal. Its job is to monitor whether there have been nuclear detonations on Russian territory and to check whether communications channels with the Kremlin have been severed. It went fully operational in January 1985. At its heart was a computer system similar to the one in Dr Strangelove. Fearing that a sneak attack by American submarine-launched missiles might take Moscow out in thirteen minutes, the Soviet leadership had authorized the construction of an automated communications network, reinforced to withstand a nuclear strike.
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