We can achieve carbon neutrality in the medium term by using nuclear power to reduce carbon emissions, but in the long term fuel stocks are not sustainable. Interestingly, in the medium term nuclear waste is a sustainability problem that disappears with a longer view due to natural radioactive decay. When I say long, I really mean long.

Alternative energy sources like wind and tidal power could be thought of as sustainable and carbon neutral. But that’s because we have no idea of the long term effects on atmospheric and oceanic dynamics, or biodiversity as a result of habitat damage. Of course there may be no such problems, however at this point we can’t definitively declare them as truly sustainable, even if we consider their life cycle to be carbon neutral.

Carbon neutrality is measured over a short time frame, usually even less than the life of a product, and is a relatively instantaneous measure of a single factor, it’s just the carbon cycle. Sustainability has no such limitations in scope, to my mind it encompasses all factors over an infinite time frame. So once again it’s a matter of choosing the right scale, with sustainability being much broader and deeper than it’s apparent twin.

Does this make carbon neutrality a convenient and ultimately meaningless political metric, leaving sustainability as the only really important consideration? I suspect that it’s often ignored because it’s too difficult to address, in part because I fear sustainability in any guise is unachievable whilst so many humans inhabit our World.

Right

Something that you are morally, legally, or officially allowed to do or have.

There may be lots of things that we want, varied things, based on our personal motivations, but to what we have a right is decided in a distinctly impersonal manner. Our rights are awarded by group consensus: you can’t have a personal right to something unless the others around you agree with your claim, or they’ll take it away, an action that we may see as unfair.

I often hear talk about human rights on the news in respect to property ownership and access to services. Answers.com defines human rights as follows:

Human Rights

The basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled, often held to include the right to life and liberty, freedom of thought and expression, and equality before the law.

I can’t see anything in that definition that entitles a person to any of the things I mentioned before, or any physical possession at all, it’s the law that does that, and these laws are the embodiment of group consensus.

Rights or Desires?

We confuse these two, and actually have a right to surprisingly little; except relative freedom to express ourselves, and have a say in the behavioural boundaries that are set by the law.

Just because we want something doesn’t give us the right to get it, and we’re going to have to face this fact in the coming years as we adapt to climate change and the impact of the financial crisis.

We in the UK won’t have the same financial freedom, and our public and private consumerism of the past decade will have to stop; people don’t have the right to own their home, and buy anything on a whim; and when combined with global population control, we have to reassess the right to have children, the acceptable scope of medical care, the cost of travel, and the price we pay for our food.

This might sound grim, but revisiting our attitudes could more evenly distribute genuine rights amongst those that value them, leading to a reduction in global poverty and conflict that would benefit us all.