but refuses to do anything at all about it, saying that the citizens of the US and the rest of the world will just have to adopt to inevitable changes.
I can’t even express using any of the resources afforded me by this message boards posting service how lividly pissed off and angry I am about this.
Let’s see, Shrub’s administration admits that yes, human actions are mostly to blame to human action, but since those actions have brought about global warming, it’s obvious that it can;t be reversed, so let’s dump more shit into the atmosphere and rivers, lakes, oceans, etc.
A few quotes: “In the report, the administration for the first time moslty blames human actions for recent global warming…But while the report says the US will be substantially changed in the next few decades–‘very likely’ seeing the disruption of snow-fed water supplies, more stifling heat waves and the permanent disappearence of Rocky Mountain meadows and coastal marshes–it does not propose and major shift in the admin’s policy on greenhouse gases…”
In fact, the models that support the theory that human action has caused GW also seem to imply that it can’t be reversed with any plausible human action that the nations would actually agree to.
I suppose a nuclear war that wiped out 99% of humanity would reverse global warming, but some might consider the cost too high.
Hey, WSLer, are you by any chance using an electrical-powered computer of some sort to send those messages? Sitting in a room with incandescent lights? Did you drive a car to work today? Do you have air conditioning on right now? Any lights on in rooms you aren’t in? Do you still have an old mercury-switch thermostat? Eat any individually-wrapped, small-serving foods today? Use a lamp when it was still light outside and there was a window available?
If you answered “yes” to some of those questions, then you are part of the problem, as are all of us. Are you willing to make significant lifestyle changes, and curtail your use of a lot of conveniences? If not, then why are you blaming George Bush?
I dunno. Because the government has a great deal of power to cause major polluters to make large-scale changes, undertake wide-scale initiatives with greater results than we can make on our own? Isn’t that why we have a government in the first place, so that we can accomplish things together that we can’t separately?
In order, 1) Yes, what other type of computer could I be using?
2)Yes, but only one of them is on and that is only so that I don;t fuck up completly while typing this.
3) Since I don’t start my job until the 24th, the answer is no. And while i could have driven to the library, instead I walked.
4) Not only is the air conditioning not on, this house doesn’t even have central air. My dad just bought 4 portables to put in various spots.
5) No.
6)No
7)Use a lamp as what, a jousting device or a lighting device? In either case, the answer is no.
As for blaming Bush, let’s see, his admin, says that “Gee, global warming IS occuring, but since it’s gotten to this point, we aren’t going to do anything to curtail and stop it.”
That is quite possibly the single most irresponsible thing a President has said since either Reagan/Nixon was in the Oval Office.
I am struck by the curious reflection that if everything is inevitable, as our élites tell us, well then we don’t really need them. After all, this is the biggest and most expensive élite in history. Either they should do their job or make way.
But matt, we are the major polluters. All of us. You, I know, have made lifestyle choices that tend to minimize your contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. Other people are perfectly capable of doing the same on their own. If you can convince a thousand homeowners to install programmable thermostats, you’ve already made a serious contribution.
But if there is significant cultural intertia and resistance to the standard-of-living changes that would be required to actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions*, I don’t believe that government should be used to batter people into making them anyway. I’m wary of using government to make people do something they don’t want to “for their own good.” That’s a philosophical difference on which you and I are unlikely to agree, so maybe it’s best to leave that there.
*As opposed to slowing the rate of increase of emissions, which is what the EPA’s report, as I understand it, recommends for the present. WSLer’s hyperbole to the contrary notwith.
I don’t know if it’s a matter of “not wanting to do something”. When I was at the Youth Summit, one of the problems we discussed was the fact that (for example) using cars is a default condition. Our cities are built around them. Getting a driver’s license is a rite of passage. Most people don’t notice how inconvenient and expensive it is now - they just don’t think about it, any more than they think about why we read left to right. It’s inertia, in large part, rather than any great intellectual commitment to the car. This could be broken, but it requires initiative, which our fantastically expensive elites are not willing to provide at this point.
Oh please. I hereby nominate this thread for being the silliest one ever. Blaming President Bush for global warming?
Btw, how much of this global warming has occured since 1/20/01?
Compare that to the warming since 1/20/93. Still not much, in the grand scheme of things, but more than what’s happened in the last 17 months. So why not blame Clinton? Or is that too politically incorrect for the leftie crowd?
Hmm… SPOOFE and pldennison think that stopping industry from killing the planet should be an effort on the part of many individuals policing themselves, while matt_mcl suggests pressuring the government to change the way corporations do things.
Well, if there’s a problem that might render the world uninhabitable, and our only options are 1) suggesting that millions of people follow an unenforced mandate or 2) enforcing a mandate on the most egregious polluters to clean up their act and to make products more efficient, then I’m going to have to go with number 2. Number 1 is too much like firing a squirt gun at a forest fire.
matt_mcl, you make the most sense here. Yours is the simplest, most practicable solution. You’re smarter than the president of the United States! (Well, most people are, but you know what I mean…)
You know, Jimmy Carter used to advocate this back in the 1970s. This sort of grass-roots, save-the-environment-one-consumer-at-a-time method stuck with me as a young boy, and I still follow President Carter’s suggestions to this day. However, many people don’t, and having listened for so many years to Rush Limbaugh and his ilk rail against the “tree-huggers” for not letting red-blooded Americans burn up all the resources they want, I have to say that there’s not only a lack of interest in acting responsibly when it comes to conservation, but there’s even a reactionary element that’s against it.
If most of us agree that significant climate change is going to come about due to current environment policies, then how can we permit anyone to get away with effectively killing us all? Isn’t murder illegal because murderers won’t police themselves?
Look, it doesn’t seem that the worlds industrial powers are going to stop emitting CO2 for the foreseeable future. Sure, Europe may cut back a little, while U.S. revs its economic engine and just cranks out more and more… so what?
If we can put a few thousand pounds of machinery on the moon, then we ought to be smart enough to deploy some permanent sunglasses between the Sun and Earth. Conveniently, there is a fairly stable orbit roughly 1 million miles from Earth (and 1 million closer to Sun) called L1. If we put a bunch of Ph. D.s in a room for a few weeks, I’ll bet they can come up with a way to float a flotilla of solar sails at that ‘sunblocking’ point – orbitting the sun every 365.25 days. This will result in fairly constant reduction in light incident on the earth’s atmosphere, oceans and crust – perhaps enought to make up for the trapped heat caused by greenhouse gasses.
A civil works project of about 10-15 years could probably place a few thousand square miles of mylar in that strategic location. If the heavy lift from Earth surface to L1 is too costly, maybe we can find some way to nudge a near Earth asteroid to park in the appropriate spot.
Doesn’t the US emit less pollution than many countries considering the size of our economy and the amount of goods we produce?
I’m still not convinced that “global warming” is occuring. Sure, the last few years have been hotter than average, but that could be be because we are coming out of a relatively cold era in history. Heck, I’m old enough to remember a few particularly cold years back in the 1970s, when the “experts” thought we were heading towards another ice age.
And even if “global warming” is occuring, how much of it is man made? Wouldn’t the sun and the Earths natural environment have a far greater impact than man?
Uninhabitable? Please. It’s asinine rhetoric like that that creates any reactionary element you see.
How much more are you, personally, willing to pay for these newly efficient products. 5%? 10%? Please be honest, because this stuff isn’t free, and somebody’s going to have to foot the bill.
I’m not convinced that “corporations” (oooh, scary) are the most egregious polluters, any more than the lifestyle habits of some 250 million individual Americans. And anyway, these “corporations” aren’t selling anything that the public isn’t rushing out to buy, are they? Which is why I maintain that the aggregate decisions of millions of Americans, if they are properly informed and education, will have a greater impact than government action. Politics are notoriously inefficient for solving problems like this, simply because those with the most to lose can buy the legislation or loopholes that they most require.