Quote:
Originally Posted by WCan_Kid
Is it these evil power brokers dragging their heels, or simply that a vast majority of people aren't willing to give up everything that relies on energy from fossil fuels to solve a problem that we may or may not have any ability to control at this point?
You have to be complete idiot to think humans won't have a negative impact on the environment, but how many of the global warming evangelists are willing to put their money where their mouth is instead of simply passing the responsibility on to someone else?
We have too many people consuming too much stuff, are you ready to give up everything that requires fossil fuels in the hope that we can reverse the damage done? Or, is it is easier to argue in favor of simply transferring money around and calling it "doing something"?
I think if some people were to set aside their undeserved arrogance for a few minutes they might realize that they're really not smarter than the average bear, they just haven't realized that others just want them shut up so they can continue focusing on a practical solution that doesn't require stepping back to the stone age and trying again.
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Who's being arrogant here? You're pretending to know all the answers in this post. You're the arrogant one.
Example 1: People don't want to give up fossil fuels. Wrong. People don't want to give up the energy services that fossil fuels provide. There are substitutes to fossil fuels. They are more expensive, but, fossil fuels are artificially cheap when we account for their planet wrecking cost to say the agricultural sector. So solutions exist here.
Example 2: Global evangelists are the problem because they aren't leading by example. This is a systemic level issue that no amount of personal action will rectify. So long as we subsidize car dependent built environments in cities and highways, so long as we demand that fossil fuels be underpriced from their true market cost, so long as government's systematically attempt to underprice the marginal cost of electricity and other fuel commodities no amount of individual action will lead to squat. This is a rhetorical trick you've invoked to promote stasis and inaction. "It's not worth doing anything because the people who say we should be doing something aren't doing anything." That trick doesn't hold water because the people who are not acting are not in positions of authority to make real change happen. You're demonizing the wrong people in an attempt to discredit their message not to find solutions.
Example 3: We are consuming too much stuff and giving up fossil fuels will mean we revert to the stone age. Utterly false. Numerous modelling exercises (hundreds) have shown that amibtious carbon reduction actions are still consistent with economic growth and consumption. If Canada were to reduce it's GHG's by 50% by 2050 it would lead to an annual GHG hit of 0.2% per year but still growing at a health 1.3%. This is analysis conducted by the National Roundtable on the Environment and Economy. You're just spewing uneducated bilge.
There are thousands of very smart people are that committed to reducing the GHG intensity of our economies and there are lots of answers. The do nothing crowd as represented by yourself consistent show a whole scale vacancy of knowledge on the topic.