Climate change theatre

Jonathan Hinkles writes in the UK magazine, Airliner World:  

Talking to a major bus operator earlier this year, I was astonished to learn that the hydrogen powering the buses that Virgin HQ's building every few minutes comes from Saudi Arabia. It's converted to ammonia pellets, which are shipped to the UK, then converted back into hydrogen for use in buses. A mind-boggling amount of energy is expended in that process to achieve 'emissions-free travel', as the bus slogan proudly complains. Sky View, Jonathan Hinkles, 'Airliner World', dated February 2025

This is what happens when we target micro-objectives devoid of any link to our environmental goals. The micro-objective here is 'a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions per bus journey', which has nothing to do with 'a reduction in total greenhouse gas emissions'. I'd go further and say that instead of targeting greenhouse gas emissions, we should clarify exactly what we want to achieve: a halt to climate change? Or a reduction of the frequency and severity of adverse climatic events? Either way, national targets, let alone bus journey targets, are useless. Without a broad, global, specification of our goals, we'd have...well, what we have now: targets for reductions in local emissions of greenhouse gases that are politically divisive, expensive, have no buy-in, and are failing even in their stated aim:

Global average abundances of the major, well-mixed, long-lived greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, CFC-12 and CFC-11 - from the NOAA [US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] global air sampling network since the beginning of 1979. These five gases account for about 96% of the effective radiative forcing by long-lived greenhouse gases since 1750. The remaining 4% is contributed by 17 other halogenated gases including HCFC-22 and HFC-134a, for which NOAA observations are also shown here. Source

My suggestions are that we first clarify whether we want to target the climate itself, or the effects of adverse climatic events on plant, animal and human life. Next, I suggest we issue Climate Stability Bonds that would specify exactly the goals that what we want to achieve, at a global level and over the very long term, and then reward the people who achieve them. I envisage that our goals would take the form targets for many variables, including those measuring features of the climate, and biological, physical, financial and social variables, all of which would have to fall into an acceptable range before the bonds could be redeemed. There are many posts relating to these suggestions on this blog, as well as links to my writings on the subject here.