The Climate Paradox

The author, Peter van Druenen We dream of a long and healthy life for everyone, invest to the utmost in our fellow men’s humanity. By doing so, we  nourish the monster called overpopulation, which is responsible for today’s rapid climate change. When we look at the increase of the world’s population combined with the increase in prosperity, the consequences for our climate become very clear. The Limits to Growth The Club of Rome already pointed out this problem in 1972 with the bestseller The Limits to Growth, a wake-up call for the world. Over the past decades, however, population growth as a decisive factor has disappeared entirely from the climate debate, as it is linked to exceptionally difficult moral questions. Is it even possible to regulate population growth. And if so, how? Climate change deniers and defenders Van Druenen places the discussion in a historical perspective, naming several thinkers who expounded controversial positions centuries ago, and are denou...

The problem: deniers and believers The climate debate is badly in need of a synthesis between belief in the existence of the crisis, scepticism regarding the expectation that it can be solved and pragmatism about what therefore needs to happen. In the current polarized debate about the climate crisis, in which believers are becoming firmer in their faith and sceptics increasingly sceptical, I am ambivalent, or rather, a pragmatist. For a start, I recognize the full extent of the climate crisis. In fact having studied the recent scientific literature on the subject I am convinced that the situation is even worse than we are generally led to think. To confirm that the polar ice caps are melting you no longer need sophisticated equipment. The naked eye is enough. Hurricanes are growing noticeably stronger, heatwaves hotter, monsoons wetter, droughts dryer and smog thicker. At the same time I acknowledge the impossibility of halting the crisis, let alone of reversing it. We are probab...