Ruminations on cognitive dissonance, climate change and Parisian wishful thinking

Aweh, My Dearly Beloved Fellow Ruminants & Groupies

First, I want to return to my dark old friend, cognitive dissonance.  Some rightly accuse me of using complex language. Cognitive dissonance is that awkward brain glitch when you’re doing one thing but know deep down you should be doing the exact opposite—like eating a large pizza with three beers and promising to eat a salad tomorrow after going to the gym!

Imagine this: the allure of far-flung destinations—like sipping Turkish coffee in a rooftop restaurant and watching the sun slowly set over the Bosphorus. Ok, let’s get real. Forget the Turkish coffee; too many glasses of wine. How about Paris in the spring or a beautiful beach in Mauritius. You tell yourself, “Travel broadens the mind; it’s essential.” I deserve this after working for forty years. But then, a darker thought creeps in every flight you take leaves a scar on the environment, deepening your carbon footprint. The very act of exploring the world you want to cherish slowly contributes to the destruction of our own habitat.

David MacKay’s free book Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air provides a rigorous, data-driven analysis of energy consumption and personal carbon footprints, making it an essential resource for understanding the real impact of everyday activities, including air travel. MacKay’s approach is pragmatic: he presents detailed energy calculations to demystify the scale of the challenges we face in reducing carbon emissions, breaking down complex global issues into understandable and actionable insights. Dr Spock would be very proud of this analysis.

In the context of air travel, MacKay doesn’t mince words. He calculates the energy cost per passenger on a long-haul flight and shows that flying is one of the most carbon-intensive activities an individual can engage in. For instance, a round-trip transatlantic flight can emit nearly 2 tons of CO₂ per person, depending on distance and the efficiency of the aircraft.

To put this in perspective, the global average carbon footprint per person is around 4-5 tons per year, so a single flight can account for nearly half of that if not more.

Let’s now turn to Parisian wishful thinking. Ah, wishful thinking—like telling yourself “Age is just a number” while your body reminds you daily it’s more of a countdown! But hey, if that delusion keeps the dream of winning a marathon alive, who am I to crush it? Someone I knew, who I hadn’t seen for ten years, walked up to me yesterday at a conference and said I had aged. No shit Sherlock. Honesty is the best policy, right?

The 2015 Paris Accord is that ambitious little global promise where almost every country agreed to try and limit global warming to “well below” 2°C above pre-industrial levels—essentially a worldwide Pinky promise to curb emissions, boost renewable energy, and hopefully keep the planet from turning into a sweaty mess. Hey, it’s nice to have goals, right? Are we on track or is this just wishful thinking?

The Paris Accord set ambitious goals, including reducing global emissions by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 to keep the dream of limiting global warming to 1.5°C alive. In other words, we’ve got less than a decade to pull off a global makeover if we want to avoid turning the planet into a slow-cooking casserole!

It’s a harsh reality: at this pace, we’re not saving the planet; we’re slow-cooking it. Most countries are nowhere near hitting their targets, and many rely on conditional actions—essentially begging for financial aid or technological handouts to keep up. Paris 2015 promised us action; 2023 gave us a lukewarm 2.5-2.9°C forecast by century’s end. We need to slash emissions by 7% per year, yet we’re not even close.  The Parisian wishful thinking is not going to happen.

Yet most of the research proposals I read parrot the Paris goals and do no introspection regarding how we are doing.

You know what? Forget cognitive dissonance. Let’s embrace perspectivism, where it’s your perspective that counts, no matter how detached from reality it might be. My current perspective? Climate change is going to get my full attention… just as soon as I finish several pizzas with beer in Mauritius chased down with some Trumpian “alternative facts” on YouTube. Trump is a man of infinite resource and sagacity from whose head the rays of the sun shine in more than oriental splendour (credit to imperialist and colonialist Rudyard Kipling). Climate change is a hoax. There problem solved. The real problem is dog and cat eating illegal immigrants.

Why bother with cognitive dissonance when you can go full delusion? Cheers to that.

Love and pizza

Bruce