2016 GOP on Climate Change: Yikes.

[Bull Moose Base]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/05/12/where-the-2016-gop-contenders-stand-on-climate-change/

[bedstuy]

This is one of those issues where Republicans are going really far right.  Forget whether they believe in the science, the party has basically abandoned the idea of environmental regulation and clean air entirely.  George W. Bush and John McCain are left-wingers on the environment in today's GOP.

[Never]

What kind of voter really makes climate change an issue above taxes, the economy, or health care?

I try not to be cynical on this issue, but I don't think that any American policy to tackle climate change would really have an impact on the overall meteorological conditions in the world, because there are so many other countries that would probably keep using fossil fuels at the current rate. If anything, China and India might start burning even more fuel in the future as their economies increase.

[Hamster]

What kind of voter really makes climate change an issue above taxes, the economy, or health care?

I try not to be cynical on this issue, but I don't think that any American policy to tackle climate change would really have an impact on the overall meteorological conditions in the world, because there are so many other countries that would probably keep using fossil fuels at the current rate. If anything, China and India might start burning even more fuel in the future as their economies increase.

The point is that the only potential Republican candidate for president who is not willing to reject reality for political expediency is the disgraced Chris Christie.

[henster]

I think the El Nino this year may cause voters to be more concerned on the issue if the weather is crazy the deniers look more unhinged and out of step with reality.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

What kind of voter really makes climate change an issue above taxes, the economy, or health care?

I try not to be cynical on this issue, but I don't think that any American policy to tackle climate change would really have an impact on the overall meteorological conditions in the world, because there are so many other countries that would probably keep using fossil fuels at the current rate. If anything, China and India might start burning even more fuel in the future as their economies increase.

Most other world leaders - the Chinese government and probable Indian right-wing PM Modi included - at least recognise that climate change is occurring, and are investing in subsidies in renewable energies and carbon capture from coal.

And surely the US, if it wants to preserve its status as a superpower, should welcome spearheading a global attempt to limit carbon emissions. After all, the US has much greater carbon emissions per capita than any of the BRICS.

Developing countries aren't ignoring climate change - in fact given their precarious position, they can't afford to. If the US elects a climate change denier, it'll just embarrass itself.

[Mr. Illini]

I still cannot believe that one of the major American political parties is largely unified in denying a theory that is accepted by almost every piece of research on the topic. It should disqualify them from being considered a major party.

This ain't your granddad's GOP. No-sir-ee.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

They should all be forced to run for the President of Tuvalu instead.

[MurrayBannerman]

What I don't understand is the rejection of such a large amount of jobs that will be produced by renewable energy. This can be maximized if we get ahead of the game and become the first to enter the wide scale market, but no, it's evil.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

The United States, Canada, and Australia are the only 3 countries where climate change denial are serious political forces.



How depressing.

[OkThen]

What kind of voter really makes climate change an issue above taxes, the economy, or health care?

I try not to be cynical on this issue, but I don't think that any American policy to tackle climate change would really have an impact on the overall meteorological conditions in the world, because there are so many other countries that would probably keep using fossil fuels at the current rate. If anything, China and India might start burning even more fuel in the future as their economies increase.

But hey, nothing like pure speculation to convince us to not even try huh?

[Never]

What kind of voter really makes climate change an issue above taxes, the economy, or health care?

I try not to be cynical on this issue, but I don't think that any American policy to tackle climate change would really have an impact on the overall meteorological conditions in the world, because there are so many other countries that would probably keep using fossil fuels at the current rate. If anything, China and India might start burning even more fuel in the future as their economies increase.

But hey, nothing like pure speculation to convince us to not even try huh?

All I'm saying is that the world isn't going to change just because of a measure that America takes. I mean, the fact that many rural areas in this nation have very clean air does not seem to decrease the smog conditions in Los Angeles, New York, and Atlanta. I'm not saying that we shouldn't invest in renewable energy and the like, but we can't just act like an American policy on climate change will be a cure-all. So yes, as a nation we should try, but we shouldn't be overly optimistic about the results of our efforts.

[pbrower2a]

What I don't understand is the rejection of such a large amount of jobs that will be produced by renewable energy. This can be maximized if we get ahead of the game and become the first to enter the wide scale market, but no, it's evil.

Big Oil calls the shots in the GOP on energy and transportation.

[MurrayBannerman]

What I don't understand is the rejection of such a large amount of jobs that will be produced by renewable energy. This can be maximized if we get ahead of the game and become the first to enter the wide scale market, but no, it's evil.

Big Oil calls the shots in the GOP on energy and transportation.

And, still, a sizable amount of Democrats as well. At least enough to keep this from, you know, helping us.

[Stranger in a strange land]

What I don't understand is the rejection of such a large amount of jobs that will be produced by renewable energy. This can be maximized if we get ahead of the game and become the first to enter the wide scale market, but no, it's evil.

Big Oil calls the shots in the GOP on energy and transportation.

And, still, a sizable amount of Democrats as well. At least enough to keep this from, you know, helping us.

The GOP is by far the bigger offender and you know it. Incidentally, that's also why so many Republican politicians engage in climate change denial.

[pbrower2a]

What kind of voter really makes climate change an issue above taxes, the economy, or health care?

I try not to be cynical on this issue, but I don't think that any American policy to tackle climate change would really have an impact on the overall meteorological conditions in the world, because there are so many other countries that would probably keep using fossil fuels at the current rate. If anything, China and India might start burning even more fuel in the future as their economies increase.

We Americans are devouring energy as if there were no limits to the resources and no consequences to its use. I see some of the projections of sea level alone and I see prime farmland being inundated. Food supply has been one of the harshest of Malthusian controls on population. With few exceptions the greatest cities in population are close to some of the world's richest farmlands. Those may be overpopulated by standards that support a European-style middle class -- just think of China, Bangladesh, and parts of Indonesia.

How many Chinese, Indonesians, or Bangladeshis are Americans willing to kill so that we can create the illusion of prosperity through the accelerated use of energy? Does anyone think that they aren't going to stay put and drown?

Another Malthusian control on population is war. If you thought World War II horrible because of the totalitarian gangster regimes -- just think of the drastic measures that national leaders will take for the survival of their peoples.  Maybe in wars over a shrinking land surface the opposing sides could have leaders more like Lincoln and Disraeli than like Churchill and Hitler.  The world's population would have to shrink to accommodate a smaller land surface. If you should think -- but look at all the boreal forest in Siberia and Canada that can be turned into productive farmland -- first, much of it won't get the needed rainfall, so it might be unsuited to such a transformation.  Second, the nutritive value of soils in the arctic and subarctic regions makes the great deserts look rich by contrast. The trees grow slowly.

The third of Malthusian controls of human population is plagues and epidemics. If you hate the harsh winters of some middle-latitude locations -- think of all the tender disease germs that can't take the cold. People under stress from hunger and overwork will be especially vulnerable.

Nature has harsh ways of correcting those who violate her laws.

Global warming will mess up everything -- government budgets, diplomacy, food supplies, and health.   

   

[Adam Griffin]

What kind of voter really makes climate change an issue above taxes, the economy, or health care?

I try not to be cynical on this issue, but I don't think that any American policy to tackle climate change would really have an impact on the overall meteorological conditions in the world, because there are so many other countries that would probably keep using fossil fuels at the current rate. If anything, China and India might start burning even more fuel in the future as their economies increase.

Pbrower more or less touched on the points, but I'll just ask this:

What happens over the course of the next 80 years or so, when anywhere from 5-20 million Americans (and that number's based just on current population) are displaced from their homes?

What happens when dozens of oil, natural gas and electric facilities along the coast are suddenly below sea level?

How do we deal with the fact that over the next few decades, there'll be thousands of additional deaths each year related to heat stroke and other forms of extreme weather, possibly surpassing the number of preventable deaths we currently have today due to a lack of health care?

How much in additional damage will this extreme weather cost us as a country?

What is our game plan - assuming we remain committed and reliant upon finite fossil fuels - when demand in the developing world as you mentioned increases substantially and the price of gas doubles or triples relative to purchasing power?

How will all of this - assuming nothing is done - impact government revenues, and how/where will we make up the difference for an almost certain decrease in them?

Once locked into a vicious cycle where the cost of energy becomes so great that it literally eats away at all of our economic growth and then some, how will we be able to afford substantial investments in forms of energy that could free us from the problem (and could have prevented the issue from becoming so bad in the first place)?

How will the increased levels of pollution (not necessarily CO2) coming from our own country and the rest of the developing world impact global health, with particular emphasis on cancer and asthma?

How will an ever growing population be able to weather the fact that an increasing percentage of land worldwide is becoming non-arable?

How much will we spend on wars over the next century that will inevitably be fought over the control of finite fossil fuels like natural gas (which so many seem to think is a saving grace), oil and maybe, if it gets really bad, coal?


We are currently producing 25% of the world's CO2 emissions - to say that a comprehensive energy policy focused on renewables wouldn't affect the global market in a long-term positive way is shortsighted. A $1 trillion investment in solar, for instance, would be enough to collapse the cost of solar installations over just a couple of years to the point that anyone would be able to buy a system and put it on their house (never mind the supply chain issues it'd create; I'm using this more along the lines of an example of the scale/impact we could have).

We completely have the ability given the size of our economy to fundamentally control the entire world's future energy policies, but unfortunately, we can't even get to that because people want to argue about whether the planet is heating up and corporate shills for the energy industries are using this as a way to assign a political ideology to the most sustainable future forms of energy. We are home to the biggest innovators on the planet, but we're also home to the biggest multinational energy mafias that'll fight tooth and nail to keep things the way they are until it kills us all.

[Adam Griffin]

And just to follow-up here: so what if we're wrong about climate change? I've yet to hear a functional argument that describes how the primary policy initiatives proposed to combat it are somehow negative.

Carbon tax - so what? Revenue collection is revenue collection; sooner or later, discretionary spending will have to increase or we're going to become a permanent second-world nation.

Reduced pollution through the former - virtually guaranteed. Because if you're pumping out a bunch of CO2, then you're probably pumping out a bunch of poisonous chemicals. I thought the GOP loved consumption-based taxes?

Permanent, stable and affordable energy independence - God forbid!

Foreign policy freed from the whims of energy-producing rogue nations - isn't that a good thing?

[Mechaman]

And just to follow-up here: so what if we're wrong about climate change? I've yet to hear a functional argument that describes how the primary policy initiatives proposed to combat it are somehow negative.

Carbon tax - so what? Revenue collection is revenue collection; sooner or later, discretionary spending will have to increase or we're going to become a permanent second-world nation.

Reduced pollution through the former - virtually guaranteed. Because if you're pumping out a bunch of CO2, then you're probably pumping out a bunch of poisonous chemicals. I thought the GOP loved consumption-based taxes?

Permanent, stable and affordable energy independence - God forbid!

Foreign policy freed from the whims of energy-producing rogue nations - isn't that a good thing?

Really, I view this as sort of a climate version of the whole Pascal Wager: "If you address Climate Change and it turns out to be real you obviously made a right decision.  However, if you address Climate Change and it was never there at least you now have sustainable resource usage, a cleaner atmosphere, lower rates of cancer, cleaner public transportation, and more efficient technologies.  If you don't address Climate Change and it turns out to be fake, nothing changes.  If you don't address Climate Change and it does turn out to be real, then you are in pretty damn serious trouble."

As a recovering alcoholic (I mean I don't have live cancer (yet), but that is no excuse to not to try to quit), I guess it's easier for me to understand the whole concept of taking care of the Earth now than it was in the past.  If somebody made the points that Griffin and Pbrower did a few months ago I would've laughed and said "oh great, more OMG THE WORLD IS GOING TO DIE IF WE DON'T INSTITUTE A CARBON TAX AND BAN INCANDESCENT BULBS ASAP OMG MY VEINS ARE POPPING WITH RAGE!"  I have been known to make some pretty blatant "what's the use" posts on this matter, however in the grand scheme of things we really should be turning this question on it's head.  If we do assume that Climate Change is real (which really shouldn't be an assumption given how much scientific community support it has) and we act in that way, society at large will in the long term benefit.

And really, I must comment that this kind of debate isn't really anything new.  As this campaign ad from Robert Kennedy tells, if we put issues like this off, future generations will be forced to deal with it.  Environmentalism and conservation didn't cease to be issues when the EPA was established, m'kay guys?

[pbrower2a]

If anyone says "Turn up the air conditioner" -- that is a losing proposition. Air conditioning is one of the most costly uses of energy possible. The Second Law of Thermodynamics allows no wiggle room.  Separation of heat and cold requires the creation of even more heat. Did you ever feel the draft of exhaust heat leaving an air conditioner?

Our economic realities are not entirely the result of our toil and cleverness. Our capacity to live as we do and with the numbers that we do  both depend heavily upon the environment in which we live. The world of the last glacial minimum (full-blown Ice Age roughly 18000 years ago) could not even support the current dog population (400 million), let alone our (seven billion) human population.

Global warming? We might lack the capacity to adapt quickly enough. We will see huge tracts of prime farmland upon which millions of people depend for survival disappear under the seas. We could easily see shifts of climatic zones, with tropical zones unsuited to large-scale human exploitation expanding into subtropical deserts with subtropical deserts extending into places on the margin between agricultural paradises (much of the Mediterranean basin, California, and coastal fringes of Australia and South Africa) or appearing in places that are not now deserts. It would not take much to bring conditions like those of the Persian Gulf region (Kuwait is a good example) into the Mediterranean Basin.

There is no technological fix for agriculture. We might get more savvy with electronic entertainments -- but we can't eat terabytes of computing power.  When a basic commodity like wheat becomes more expensive than silver per unit of weight, then much that we have will become futile and useless.

Global warming is consummate folly. A globally warmed world would be the ultimate expression of the stock villain of literature known as the Mad Scientist. Who needs a "Lex Luthor" or a "Simon Bar Sinister"? OK, the Mad Scientist is a rarity. In fact it is the Mad Pseudo-scientist or Mad Tycoon who poses more danger. Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a Frankenstein monster. But much unlike the Frankenstein monster who terrorized a village in Transylvania, the Frankenstein monster of AGW will make life miserable and precarious for us all.       

[Mechaman]

If anyone says "Turn up the air conditioner" -- that is a losing proposition. Air conditioning is one of the most costly uses of energy possible. The Second Law of Thermodynamics allows no wiggle room.  Separation of heat and cold requires the creation of even more heat. Did you ever feel the draft of exhaust heat leaving an air conditioner?

Our economic realities are not entirely the result of our toil and cleverness. Our capacity to live as we do and with the numbers that we do  both depend heavily upon the environment in which we live. The world of the last glacial minimum (full-blown Ice Age roughly 18000 years ago) could not even support the current dog population (400 million), let alone our (seven billion) human population.

Global warming? We might lack the capacity to adapt quickly enough. We will see huge tracts of prime farmland upon which millions of people depend for survival disappear under the seas. We could easily see shifts of climatic zones, with tropical zones unsuited to large-scale human exploitation expanding into subtropical deserts with subtropical deserts extending into places on the margin between agricultural paradises (much of the Mediterranean basin, California, and coastal fringes of Australia and South Africa) or appearing in places that are not now deserts. It would not take much to bring conditions like those of the Persian Gulf region (Kuwait is a good example) into the Mediterranean Basin.

There is no technological fix for agriculture. We might get more savvy with electronic entertainments -- but we can't eat terabytes of computing power.  When a basic commodity like wheat becomes more expensive than silver per unit of weight, then much that we have will become futile and useless.

Global warming is consummate folly. A globally warmed world would be the ultimate expression of the stock villain of literature known as the Mad Scientist. Who needs a "Lex Luthor" or a "Simon Bar Sinister"? OK, the Mad Scientist is a rarity. In fact it is the Mad Pseudo-scientist or Mad Tycoon who poses more danger. Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a Frankenstein monster. But much unlike the Frankenstein monster who terrorized a village in Transylvania, the Frankenstein monster of AGW will make life miserable and precarious for us all.      

And this doesn't really help anything, at all.  This is like telling a cancer patient that they have no chance in hell and they should just jump.

I mean seriously, posts like this are why efforts to combat Climate Change are a hard sell for many people.  We want them to believe that they can make a difference by supporting solutions, while at the same time insisting that it's inevitable they will cook their young and old to feed themselves in the coming New Ice Age.

I mean really!

[pbrower2a]

If anyone says "Turn up the air conditioner" -- that is a losing proposition. Air conditioning is one of the most costly uses of energy possible. The Second Law of Thermodynamics allows no wiggle room.  Separation of heat and cold requires the creation of even more heat. Did you ever feel the draft of exhaust heat leaving an air conditioner?

Our economic realities are not entirely the result of our toil and cleverness. Our capacity to live as we do and with the numbers that we do  both depend heavily upon the environment in which we live. The world of the last glacial minimum (full-blown Ice Age roughly 18000 years ago) could not even support the current dog population (400 million), let alone our (seven billion) human population.

Global warming? We might lack the capacity to adapt quickly enough. We will see huge tracts of prime farmland upon which millions of people depend for survival disappear under the seas. We could easily see shifts of climatic zones, with tropical zones unsuited to large-scale human exploitation expanding into subtropical deserts with subtropical deserts extending into places on the margin between agricultural paradises (much of the Mediterranean basin, California, and coastal fringes of Australia and South Africa) or appearing in places that are not now deserts. It would not take much to bring conditions like those of the Persian Gulf region (Kuwait is a good example) into the Mediterranean Basin.

There is no technological fix for agriculture. We might get more savvy with electronic entertainments -- but we can't eat terabytes of computing power.  When a basic commodity like wheat becomes more expensive than silver per unit of weight, then much that we have will become futile and useless.

Global warming is consummate folly. A globally warmed world would be the ultimate expression of the stock villain of literature known as the Mad Scientist. Who needs a "Lex Luthor" or a "Simon Bar Sinister"? OK, the Mad Scientist is a rarity. In fact it is the Mad Pseudo-scientist or Mad Tycoon who poses more danger. Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a Frankenstein monster. But much unlike the Frankenstein monster who terrorized a village in Transylvania, the Frankenstein monster of AGW will make life miserable and precarious for us all.      

And this doesn't really help anything, at all.  This is like telling a cancer patient that they have no chance in hell and they should just jump.

I mean seriously, posts like this are why efforts to combat Climate Change are a hard sell for many people.  We want them to believe that they can make a difference by supporting solutions, while at the same time insisting that it's inevitable they will cook their young and old to feed themselves in the coming New Ice Age.

I mean really!

Suppose that "Cassandra" had predicted in 1930 that Germany was on the brink of abandoning democracy for the known tyranny of Bolshevism or the alternative of right-wing political nastiness as Hitler bowdlerized it for mass consumption only to rise to power only to take off the velvet gloves. Suppose that "Cassandra" then said that Hitler would destroy all political opposition to him as thoroughly as Stalin did except to not purge the military (which he needed for the achievement of his megalomania), that he would revive an archaic and disreputable hatred (for Jews) and turn it into a core of his public policy as mass murder of people that Germany seemed to need and were a disproportionate part of the German middle class, and that he would start ferocious wars even more bloody than the war (the World War) that had made most of humanity (including Germans) find war abhorrent. Suppose that "Cassandra" had warned that a rabble-rousing politician with no experience in public office and no other platform than a rambling testament to his own political crankiness, religious bigotry, pathological nationalism, and personal sociopathy would win the support of big landowners, tycoons, and business executives so that those elitist operators would get enhanced profits from the smashing of all freedom of working people and lucrative contracts for munitions, would achieve despotic power.   Suppose that "Cassandra" also warned that Hitler would have some smashing military victories despite having no experience as a military officer, only to force a coalition of three of the most dangerous Powers that would then stop him and close in on him. In 1936 no people would be more proud of their national identity  than Germans -- but in 1946 no people would be so shamed as Germans were after the war.

"Cassandra" would have seemed fit for a psychiatric examination followed by a long stay of institutionalization. But she would have been right.

I have no illusion of the goodness of humanity when it sees itself in a combination of personal fear and economic distress. When people see gross danger and no obvious solution they often turn on each other. FDR got it right when he said

"We have nothing to fear... but Fear itself!

It is best that we deal with things that can give us extreme fear and no solutions before we get into distress devoid of solutions. We can do something about global warming now - zero population growth and technological alternatives to energy use. Many of us are doing something about it. We have been using energy as a substitute for labor -- to the detriment of labor. That may have to change solely to achieve some social equity.              

[Never]

If anyone says "Turn up the air conditioner" -- that is a losing proposition. Air conditioning is one of the most costly uses of energy possible. The Second Law of Thermodynamics allows no wiggle room.  Separation of heat and cold requires the creation of even more heat. Did you ever feel the draft of exhaust heat leaving an air conditioner?

Our economic realities are not entirely the result of our toil and cleverness. Our capacity to live as we do and with the numbers that we do  both depend heavily upon the environment in which we live. The world of the last glacial minimum (full-blown Ice Age roughly 18000 years ago) could not even support the current dog population (400 million), let alone our (seven billion) human population.

Global warming? We might lack the capacity to adapt quickly enough. We will see huge tracts of prime farmland upon which millions of people depend for survival disappear under the seas. We could easily see shifts of climatic zones, with tropical zones unsuited to large-scale human exploitation expanding into subtropical deserts with subtropical deserts extending into places on the margin between agricultural paradises (much of the Mediterranean basin, California, and coastal fringes of Australia and South Africa) or appearing in places that are not now deserts. It would not take much to bring conditions like those of the Persian Gulf region (Kuwait is a good example) into the Mediterranean Basin.

There is no technological fix for agriculture. We might get more savvy with electronic entertainments -- but we can't eat terabytes of computing power.  When a basic commodity like wheat becomes more expensive than silver per unit of weight, then much that we have will become futile and useless.

Global warming is consummate folly. A globally warmed world would be the ultimate expression of the stock villain of literature known as the Mad Scientist. Who needs a "Lex Luthor" or a "Simon Bar Sinister"? OK, the Mad Scientist is a rarity. In fact it is the Mad Pseudo-scientist or Mad Tycoon who poses more danger. Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a Frankenstein monster. But much unlike the Frankenstein monster who terrorized a village in Transylvania, the Frankenstein monster of AGW will make life miserable and precarious for us all.      

And this doesn't really help anything, at all.  This is like telling a cancer patient that they have no chance in hell and they should just jump.

I mean seriously, posts like this are why efforts to combat Climate Change are a hard sell for many people.  We want them to believe that they can make a difference by supporting solutions, while at the same time insisting that it's inevitable they will cook their young and old to feed themselves in the coming New Ice Age.

I mean really!

Suppose that "Cassandra" had predicted in 1930 that Germany was on the brink of abandoning democracy for the known tyranny of Bolshevism or the alternative of right-wing political nastiness as Hitler bowdlerized it for mass consumption only to rise to power only to take off the velvet gloves. Suppose that "Cassandra" then said that Hitler would destroy all political opposition to him as thoroughly as Stalin did except to not purge the military (which he needed for the achievement of his megalomania), that he would revive an archaic and disreputable hatred (for Jews) and turn it into a core of his public policy as mass murder of people that Germany seemed to need and were a disproportionate part of the German middle class, and that he would start ferocious wars even more bloody than the war (the World War) that had made most of humanity (including Germans) find war abhorrent. Suppose that "Cassandra" had warned that a rabble-rousing politician with no experience in public office and no other platform than a rambling testament to his own political crankiness, religious bigotry, pathological nationalism, and personal sociopathy would win the support of big landowners, tycoons, and business executives so that those elitist operators would get enhanced profits from the smashing of all freedom of working people and lucrative contracts for munitions, would achieve despotic power.   Suppose that "Cassandra" also warned that Hitler would have some smashing military victories despite having no experience as a military officer, only to force a coalition of three of the most dangerous Powers that would then stop him and close in on him. In 1936 no people would be more proud of their national identity  than Germans -- but in 1946 no people would be so shamed as Germans were after the war.

"Cassandra" would have seemed fit for a psychiatric examination followed by a long stay of institutionalization. But she would have been right.

I have no illusion of the goodness of humanity when it sees itself in a combination of personal fear and economic distress. When people see gross danger and no obvious solution they often turn on each other. FDR got it right when he said

"We have nothing to fear... but Fear itself!

It is best that we deal with things that can give us extreme fear and no solutions before we get into distress devoid of solutions. We can do something about global warming now - zero population growth and technological alternatives to energy use. Many of us are doing something about it. We have been using energy as a substitute for labor -- to the detriment of labor. That may have to change solely to achieve some social equity.

The increased use of energy in the industrialized world has given us so many benefits, as well as its disadvantages. I recognize that.

The massive use of energy in the modern world has increased crop production, accelerated global transportation, allowed electricity to take hold in many parts of the world (allowing many people to work into the night without the danger of fire associated with many other forms of light), and allowed increased communication through phone lines and Internet connections. I think it is safe to say that human life is better now in places where a great deal of energy is used. It is pretty clear that our standard of living is much higher than that of prior eras. I, for one, would not want to live in any period of time other than the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

I found it interesting that you brought up "zero-population growth" as a solution to the issue of climate change. North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and wealthier portions of Asia like Japan and South Korea are already heading towards population decline to some extent, and people are concerned about how that will negatively affect society. On the other hand, the bulk of future population growth will likely come from Africa and Arabic countries, and it seems that some are quick to argue that this is also negative. I wouldn't expect both population growth and decline to be net negatives. Although "zero population growth" seems like a good plan in theory, there are so many complexities related to childbearing that it would not be realistic to expect a population of any group to voluntarily remain completely balanced. There are always going to be couples who don't want children, couples that just want one child, others that want two, and still other couples that want three, four, or more children. I'm assuming that a hypothetically balanced population would be one in which every couple had two children to replace them. This would not work because you inevitably have people who are infertile and individuals who die before they reproduce, resulting in the population ultimately decreasing. In this respect, it would clearly take an outside entity like the government in order to maintain the sustainability of the population, and that maintaining this balance would be artificial. We see the dangers of this in Communist China, which arbitrarily instituted a one-child policy in 1979. I hold the belief that it is authoritarian to tell parents the number of children that they should have in order to combat climate change, and that how many children people decide to have is their own business.

However, on a related note, one of the best ways to induce people towards having fewer children is through some forms of technology. In the nation of India, it has been shown that the presence of television probably reduces family size. I found this relevant because this nugget of truth gives credence to the argument that technology could actually help reduce population growth in some places. This might be a better way of reducing population growth.

This brings me to a point where I readily agree with climate change combaters. I wholeheartedly believe that further technological discoveries can help humanity move forward. Alternative energy sources like wind and solar can definitely take the place of oil in many instances, and I would applaud anyone who comes up with the next innovation in the technologies that will make the price of those alternatives decrease to the point that oil is not cost-effective.

In short, I hold the opinion that we should consider solutions to any problem based on their own merit. We should never keep doing something simply because it is already in place, especially if there is a better option. On the other hand, I find no fault in keeping the status quo if it can be shown that a new method is not up to par. With climate change, I feel that it is inconclusive whether some measures on climate change will even work, and that we need to be aware that our efforts in combating this problem might not completely work out. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't explore new options as they are presented to us, but we shouldn't expect a silver bullet solution to our problems with climate change.

[pbrower2a]

Radios are not a problem. Some can be powered by hand cranks. I recognize that the flat screen TV uses much less power than the old CRT and projection TVs. Electronic goodies have been redesigned to use less energy due to miniaturization. LEDs will eventually replace almost all incandescent lighting. and cut down heavily on energy use in lighting.

Energy use in crop production has its own merits.

I fully recognize that television has done much to reduce birth rates. Brazil is doing better because of a falling birthrate. The telenovelas glamorize small families with few children, and people imitate what they see.

The one constant that I can predict is that  human stupidity, gullibility, and greed do not vanish on their own. Just look at American politics.

 

[MurrayBannerman]

What I don't understand is the rejection of such a large amount of jobs that will be produced by renewable energy. This can be maximized if we get ahead of the game and become the first to enter the wide scale market, but no, it's evil.

Big Oil calls the shots in the GOP on energy and transportation.

And, still, a sizable amount of Democrats as well. At least enough to keep this from, you know, helping us.

The GOP is by far the bigger offender and you know it. Incidentally, that's also why so many Republican politicians engage in climate change denial.

I never claimed that to not be the case.