I don't really want to jump into this very badly, mostly because I don't have a binary position on this topic. But here goes. This topic falls in lockstep with the rest of our God forsaken culture in the 2 positions are fucking all or nothing, either of which is manageable.
First, climate on the planet hasn't been particularly stable across time. The obvious answer is the Ice Age, but even then there are other aspects, such as the Dickens Winter that are far from stable.
I haven't done to the work to figure out the Science - not because I'm a conspiracy theorist or an anti Science guy, but more importantly because it is an exercise in futility. Here's the thing, we as humans impact the planet. We just do, and there is literally NOTHING we can do to completely eliminate our impact on the planet.
As a short aside that illustrates my point, my great grandparents built a house in 1922 on some native grass. They started running their model Ts through the pasture and up to the road. They did that for less than a year and made a road to a different road which we still use. Well, I can show you the track they used in the pasture today. Driving a model T across grass a few times impacts it badly enough that it is visually evident for 96 years? And we are expecting us as a global society to achieve a symbiotic relationship with our planet - which is unachievable without completely removing our impact on the planet. If a few trips with a model T affects grass for 96 years, there is literally no way we can eliminate our impact of civilization. Think about the difference between running a car on grass versus even a small town. It just isn't in the cards.
Accordingly, we should be looking for ways to reduce our impact with the least impact on society. Because having a net 0 impact on the environment means most people on this planet die, which I have a moral objection to.
As per the norm, we choose some little foothold of fact and choose that foothold to make a hill to die on rather than have an objective discussion. Shit makes me crazy.
As usual, BL articulates the points about energy and it's importance to society far better than I can.
Originally Posted by Baby Lee:
First off, are you talking about pollution, or CO2?
Second, if you're talking about 'taking care of' CO2, there are plenty of ways that efforts at reduction can impose 'bad.'
Energy is our lifeblood. Human capacity to harness energy to productive ends is the single biggest factor in our contemporary quality of life, as well as health and longevity.
There are mechanisms for harnessing energy that involve no emission of CO2, but at present and for the foreseeable future, CO2 emission is part of the most efficient, effecitve and affordable way of providing reliable energy to mass populations.
I am all for progress. I am all for finding newer, cheaper, more efficient, more reliable methods of energy producting, harnessing, and transmission.
But moving beyond our current understanding without a new understanding to replace it at the same price will incur severe costs. Some will just be belt tightening. Some will be marginalizing. Some will be deadly.
People like to think that the 'climate change debate' is between deniers who oppose progress and advocates to support progress. But the true 'debate' is between the laws of physics and our understanding of them. Harnessed energy is a powerful tool for human comfort, productivity and achievement, but it is slavishly bound to the laws of the universe that we can only understand, not bend, not erase, not ignore.
Bottom line is, if you reduce CO2 and more importantly the energy that is derived from it's production, people will die. End. I'm all about doing what we can, but not at the expense of humanity. Moreover, nationally, I am opposed to doing it at the expense of competitive advantages.
And let's be real here, Even if we swap out every combustion motor in the countryside, we will still be producing a massive amount of CO2 to power those motors, it will be centralized, and probably more efficient, but we won't have solved shit. We will still be overproducing CO2, despite massive expense to offset it.
So the bottom line is, I don't know specifics about climate change, but our impact on the environment is undeniable. And while we should actively work to reduce that impact, but our moral obligation remains to the propagation of our species.
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