How To Cure The Environment (Oh, Yeah?)
I have been too busy to post for nearly two weeks, in contravention of all the rules about getting your blog noticed (not that anybody will, anyway)
It is perhaps just as well. Brand new evidence seems to settle the issues discussed last time of whether humans are having a major effect on the climate. Apparently ocean temperatures are going up in a way which is not compatible with natural solar cycles . Moreover 20,000 sq.km of Arctic ocean ice have gone in the past twenty years, and the same amount again will probably switch off the Gulf Stream (as a system "flip") and thus, ironically plunge Europe and North America into frozen conditions while the rest of the world boils.
OK the scientists may have got it wrong again but you have to trust the weight of evidence by now (even you New Agers and creationists use some modern technology, right? Then deep down, you too believe). On the principle that a small risk with catastrophic consequences should be attended too, this is the biggest issue facing mankind.
Th trouble is it gets tangled in with religious attitudes. The American right seems to think that it is unAmerican not to consume as much as you want, and some of the nuttier fundamentalists do not think it matters because we are close to the End of Days anyway (how dare they presume to know what God wants?). Europeans are just as bad: since they stopped believing in God, Marx or the superior race, most believe in nothing, (with slow but catastrophic consequences). Some, however, and particularly in nature-worshipping Germany and Scandinavia believe in the green paradise and the sinfulness of the modern world.
The net result is that America does nothing, while Europe foists a do-gooding and ineffective piece of socialism called the Kyoto Protocol on the world. Because America will not join, developing countries are exempt (including China, eventually to overtake the US as the biggest energy consumer) and the rest of the world is not incentivised to comply, it will have little effect.
What is to be done? At the risk of being boring, we need to keep the emotion, morality and quasi-religiousness out of it. I will try in subsequent posts to look at the following:
- gradualism (carbon taxes, mix of technologies etc.)
- radical new energy sources
they are the easy ones:
- we leave the earth to be a nature reserve and go and live in space colonies (interestingly mad)
- and hardest and most dangerous of all, a switch back to non-material goals
It is perhaps just as well. Brand new evidence seems to settle the issues discussed last time of whether humans are having a major effect on the climate. Apparently ocean temperatures are going up in a way which is not compatible with natural solar cycles . Moreover 20,000 sq.km of Arctic ocean ice have gone in the past twenty years, and the same amount again will probably switch off the Gulf Stream (as a system "flip") and thus, ironically plunge Europe and North America into frozen conditions while the rest of the world boils.
OK the scientists may have got it wrong again but you have to trust the weight of evidence by now (even you New Agers and creationists use some modern technology, right? Then deep down, you too believe). On the principle that a small risk with catastrophic consequences should be attended too, this is the biggest issue facing mankind.
Th trouble is it gets tangled in with religious attitudes. The American right seems to think that it is unAmerican not to consume as much as you want, and some of the nuttier fundamentalists do not think it matters because we are close to the End of Days anyway (how dare they presume to know what God wants?). Europeans are just as bad: since they stopped believing in God, Marx or the superior race, most believe in nothing, (with slow but catastrophic consequences). Some, however, and particularly in nature-worshipping Germany and Scandinavia believe in the green paradise and the sinfulness of the modern world.
The net result is that America does nothing, while Europe foists a do-gooding and ineffective piece of socialism called the Kyoto Protocol on the world. Because America will not join, developing countries are exempt (including China, eventually to overtake the US as the biggest energy consumer) and the rest of the world is not incentivised to comply, it will have little effect.
What is to be done? At the risk of being boring, we need to keep the emotion, morality and quasi-religiousness out of it. I will try in subsequent posts to look at the following:
- gradualism (carbon taxes, mix of technologies etc.)
- radical new energy sources
they are the easy ones:
- we leave the earth to be a nature reserve and go and live in space colonies (interestingly mad)
- and hardest and most dangerous of all, a switch back to non-material goals
Labels: Environment
posted by Total Issues at 3:42 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home