Every day life 4 cool campsite cats
Our friends up the road "we three cats" have their own blog so with that success in mind we thought we'd better get with the program and join the 21st century.
Our co-habitees work far too hard for their own good with both running a campsite in wales and holding down full-time jobs. They really do sometimes miss the bigger picture and the meaning of life.
Anyway these are our ramblings and experience of life here in Pembrokeshire.
| Autumn is officially here Nov'09 |
Today after an "incidedent" in the hall.
Our litter tray arrived and Autumn is officially marked by the re-instatemnt of our inside toilet.
The cat concerned always remains annoymous to avoid a severe scolding, and the deed is done in the dark part of the day as too avoid our house sitters seeing who done it!
Must try and update this more often its just I am so busy trying to fit it in. |
Investing in spaceship Earth - October 2009
You guys are all converts I know, but I thought you’d like to see this anyways and I am sure you could forward this on to other doers and shakers.
I have been struggling and almost become insensitive to the trillions, billions , millions of pounds/dollars quoted and bounded around the media and on TV.
So I sorted out the proper definitions of billions, millions etc. and then got these figures into a form I could easily understand.
Please understand this is not accurate to the penny but it really does help to understand the gravity of the situation.
All sources are from the world bank, the stern report and our beloved government.
If you look at the worlds GDP for 2008 as $ 60,115,459,000,000 (world bank figure) then move the decimal point 12 places to the left,
allow for the average interbank exchange rate exchange form USD to GBP during 2008 you end up with
a World GDP of £ 36.00 plus or minus a few pence for 2008.
On this new understandable scale:
The UK’s GDP for 2008 becomes £2.60
You will no doubt recall Lord Stern’s 2006 report (was it really that long ago)
“Using the results from formal economic models, the Review estimates that if we don’t
act, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least
5% of global GDP each year now and forever. If a wider range of risks and impacts
is taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to 20% of GDP or more.
In contrast, the costs of action – reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the
worst impacts of climate change – can be limited to around 1% of global GDP each
year
The investment that takes place in the next 10-20 years will have a profound effect
on the climate in the second half of this century and in the next. Our actions now and
over the coming decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and
social activity, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the
economic depression of the first half of the 20th century. And it will be difficult or
impossible to reverse these changes.”
So to convert to our scale, an investment of about 2.6 pence per year for the UK or 36p the whole world to help save us from a possible
annual cost that could be in excess of £ 7.20 per year for the whole world.
Seems like a good investment to me, although it defies logic how slow governments are to follow up investing in a
6 billion year old space ship capable of supporting life in abundance flying through space at thousands of miles an hour.
Then I remembered on October 8th last year Brown and Darling addressed the nation and said “ they were
implementing a £ 500 billion bail out of the banking system” . ( www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4905637.ece)
That is 20% of our GDP ! or about 50 pence our scale.
It didn’t take them to long to make that decision to invest in a business that has been around for
just a few hundred years, run by well, basically I leave you to decide the bankers characters.
So is this the real cost ? Politicians haven’t been the most forthcoming with expenses declarations.
Interesting eh…
So that’s more money invested in the banking system in the UK alone than we need as a whole planet to start sorting
out the worlds climate problems for a whole year! So it no longer seems to be a question of can we find this money and more
about re-allocating it to the longer term investment. Too simple ?
Oh and I leave you with these few questions to add to no doubt a few more.
Are the bankers being paid a reasonable wage for the job they do so badly ?
Is it time to take over real control of these publicly funded , privately rewarded organisations ?
Anyone for more shares in RBS or Spaceship Earth ?
