How many times have I heard that phrase.... “well, every little bit helps”. Sometimes that’s true. But often it’s not. Let’s see where it’s not.
It’s not true that every little bit helps if the "little bit" that’s helped is outweighed by a “big bad”.
Examples: in the pandemic, we had lockdowns. The idea that we should stay at home was a kind of “every bit helps” strategy. But it was not balanced against the bits that weren’t helped: jobs, businesses, sanity. All impacted. Also masks: they did help a bit. But they also don’t help a lot, like with kids at school who suffered from not seeing faces, not being able to see teachers lips, when new words are explained.
Most often though I’ve heard “every bit helps” in relation to Climate Change, now known as the Climate “crisis”. "Every bit helps” we keep being told.
But does it?
Netherlands farmers and nitrogen fertilisers. The Dutch government has declared war on Dutch farmers and trying to shut down 3,000 farms. Because they use nitrogen fertilisers. And fertilisers are one of the Greenhouse gases. The government hasn’t quite said so, but we sense that it’s a “every bit helps” policy. Even if the Netherlands is only responsible for a small portion of nitrous oxide released by fertilisers, nevertheless, every bit helps.
But look at some figures:
Greenhouse Gas (GHG) contributions to global warming (2017): Carbon dioxide 76%, methane 16% and Nitrous oxide: 6%.
Worldwide nitrogen fertiliser use (2019): 191 million tonnes. Netherlands nitrogen fertiliser use (2019): 277,000 tonnes. Netherlands use of nitrogen fertiliser as % of the world: 0.277/191 = 0.14%.
Assume that the Netherlands stops all farmers using nitrogen fertiliser, the effect on GHG = 0.14% of 6% = 0.0084%. Clearly even the tiny number is an exaggeration, for not event the Dutch government is suggesting a complete stoppage of farming. But still, take that top end figure. It’s tiny.
But “every little bit helps”. Right?
Wrong. The Dutch farming industry -- and I’ve only just learned this -- is huge; much bigger than Holland’s small are suggests. Holland is a major supplier of food for Europe and the world. Its farming sector employs thousands of farmers, many small holders, farms that have been in families for generations. Now about to be stolen from them for an ideological position, based on and absurd notion that “every little bit helps”, even when the Netherlands’ “little bit” is miniscule. The other side, the “big bad” is not nothing. It’s huge. For the arguable “every little bit helps” -- in fifty or a hundred years -- the Dutch government attempting to destroy today the competitive, lively, modern industry. (No, this is not “climate denial” or any such nonsense. We all know the climate is changing and we have to address that. It’s that this way of addressing it is simply absurd, cruel and useless).
It’s not “every little bit helps:. It’s more like “Every little bit harms”, if the harm is immediate and the “help” is distant, doubtful and itself miniscule.
Australia and Climate Change. Australia is a similar case. We’re agonising and arguing and fighting and going bananas over how much or how too-little we’re doing to “fight to climate crisis”. But the fact of Australia is that with our emissions at around 1.5% of the world total, we could stop them tomorrow (at what massive cost?!) and it would make approximately zero difference to the world temperature in 2050 or 2100. Mainly because the increase (or decrease) in Chinese emissions in just one year is greater than the whole of the totality of Australian GHG emissions. I know Australians don’t like to hear this, because it renders them useless in the fight agains the Climate Emergency. So they argue the “every little bit helps” line. And also the “we’re setting an example” line. Sad story: neither holds any water. The “every little bit helps” doesn’t hold water, because the benefit from Australia cutting emissions will be indistinguishable from background noise, unseeable. And “setting an example”? Sorry, but nobody cares about Australia. I mean almost literally. Nobody cares. Set an example or not, nobody cares.
In short, sometimes “every little bit helps”. Like when you’ve got a tug-of-war going on at the local village fête. But it doesn’t help in things like Covid policy and Climate policy when the little “bit” is outweighed by the very large“bad”.
I can’t finish a climate change related post without a plug for Nuclear energy. The Dutch have the capacity to generate clean, clear, cheap, safe, constant electricity at zero carbon dioxide. They don’t do it, again because captured by ideologies of the Greens. As in Germany. That’s insanity and it’s down to the Greens. Sorry, but it is.
