Billions for Climate Change

[Gardenarian]

It would be a small price to pay to save the planet, but it's not going to happen.

Our grandchildren will curse us, and they'll be right.

[Ultralight]

So, is the reason you have not joined the climate change camp because you haven't been convinced that the scientists actually are committed what they're espousing? What would you need to see from them for you to say, "Holy cow, I guess 95% of the scientists are right--we're up s**t's creek!"?



That seems like palliative care. How is that going to save the salmon and the cod when we will still be shoving them aside for our own desires?

I actually think it is 97% of scientists that are in agreement about climate change being both real and anthropogenic.

[Ultralight]

It would be a small price to pay to save the planet, but it's not going to happen.

Our grandchildren will curse us, and they'll be right.

Small price? Are you serious or just messing with us?

[ApatheticNoMore]

I got an idea. Mince the scientists don't seem to want to actively campaign for the veracity of climate change......I mean shouldn't they all be in the streets with signs saying, "the sky is falling".

scientists are probably socialized to be cautious, circumspect etc., though some are most definitely involved in the climate movement, I've met some. But the type of personality that becomes/is fostered in the training of becoming a scientist may not overlap with the type that becomes a radical activist all that much. But that's psychology not climate science and really has nothing to do with whether we're sealing in our demise via alarming degrees of climate change.

[Ultralight]

Worth watching... It is only 6 minutes or so.

[LDAHL]

Charles Eisenstein posted an essay today--he's speaking in Paris tonight, and his thoughts reflect mine--that tracking CO2 is not the main environmental issue--it's a measuring stick, but it's not the cure. (Sorry for the long quote--I thought there was a link to the essay, but there isn't, so here is a sizable excerpt of the FB post.)

If it is wrong to think in terms of data and quantitative analysis, what alternative mode of thinking is he suggesting?

[catherine]

If it is wrong to think in terms of data and quantitative analysis, what alternative mode of thinking is he suggesting?

I don't think it's wrong--it's just a diversion. His suggestion is very qualitative.. Here's the rest of his essay with his suggestion and prediction: again, apologies for the long quote, but there's no link:

In other words, what we need is a revolution of love. When we as a society learn to see the planet and everything on it as beings deserving of respect -- in their own right and not just for their use to us -- then we won't need to appeal to climate change to do all the best things that the climate change warriors would have us do. And, we will stop doing the awful things that we do in the name of stopping climate change.

Ironically, many of the environmental issues that seem unrelated to climate change, we are learning, actually do contribute to it. Take hydroelectric dams: they flood forests and wetlands, displace communities, and disrupt riverine ecosystems. But at least they provide climate-friendly electricity, right? Well, no. It turns out that dams and artificial reservoirs emit huge amounts of methane from the rotting vegetation that they generate, and reduce rivers' ability to capture carbon.

Finally, let us admit that our knowledge of Earth's climate homeostasis is quite rudimentary. While we assume that, say, digging gold out of a mountain has little effect on climate, other cultures disagree. A Brazilian friend of mine who works with indigenous tribes there reports that according to them, mining is a much bigger threat to the planet than CO2, because when metals are removed from the tropics and moved to the temperate zones, the planet's energetics are disrupted. Even taking gold away from a sacred mountain can have devastating effects. A Zuni man I met told me that they believe that the worst thing is to take so much water that the rivers no longer reach the sea -- because how then can the ocean know what the land needs?

Let us not be too quick to dismiss such ideas as superstitious fantasy. Time and again, indigenous people have proven that their "superstitions" encode a sophisticated understanding of ecology. While such ideas as "insulting the water" and "stealing the golden soul of the mountains" seem baldly unscientific, we may need to start taking them seriously.

I will end with a prediction. I predict that we will succeed in drastically reducing fossil fuel use, beyond the most optimistic projections -- and that climate change will continue to worsen. It might be warming, it might be cooling, it might be intensifying fluctuations, a derangement of normal, life-giving rhythms. Then will we realize the importance of those things that we'd relegated to low priority: the mangrove swamps, the deep aquifers, the sacred sites, the biodiversity hotspots, the virgin forests, the elephants, the whales... all the beings that, in mysterious ways invisible to our numbers, maintain the balance of our living planet. Then will we realize that as we do to any part of nature, so, inescapably, we do to ourselves. The current climate change narrative is but a first step toward that understanding.

[ApatheticNoMore]

If it is wrong to think in terms of data and quantitative analysis, what alternative mode of thinking is he suggesting?

It seems to me the best available as well, but I don't know how serious anyone really was on agreeing to targets. The alternative to trying to set hard limits (or incentives that reach them like carbon taxes etc.), is I suppose hoping for that techno fix, that alternatives to fossil fuel ramp up fast enough and work well enough to save us, and certainly money could in theory be poured into that hope, to developing and researching alternatives further. A long shot for sure.

Hoping for universal spiritual transformation is an *even* longer shot than that, I mean what is the history of that, it never has really happened universally, and do we have time anyway? But a more pragmatic ethical awareness? I don't know. I don't think that's wrong. It's little more than: we are ethically responsible to the future. But what if people are too busy surviving to contemplate that? And you've reached the cr@ppy conditions under which much of mankind lives I'm afraid.

[catherine]

Hoping for universal spiritual transformation is an *even* longer shot than that, I mean what is the history of that, it never has really happened universally, and do we have time anyway? But a more pragmatic ethical awareness? I don't know. I don't think that's wrong. It's little more than: we are ethically responsible to the future. But what if people are too busy surviving to contemplate that? And you've reached the cr@ppy conditions under which much of mankind lives I'm afraid.

As optimistic as I am by nature, I tend to agree with you, which is why I didn't include Eisenstein's solutions initially. I believe they are the "right" answers, but pretty utopian.

[LDAHL]

I don't think it's wrong--it's just a diversion. His suggestion is very qualitative.. Here's the rest of his essay with his suggestion and prediction: again, apologies for the long quote, but there's no link:

So if I'm understanding him correctly, a "revolution of love" involves reverting to a sort of nature-worship that requires treating everything everywhere as sacred and near inviolate? I don't see much room for civilization in that view of the world.