What are we going to do about Global Warming? Do you believe it is a real phenomenon? Why debate it? Get active.
This is not some hippy sentiment for tree hugging but a request for us to consider the real, practical, sustainable cultural changes we must do to keep our world alive?
What the hell are we going to do>? And are we going to start tomorrow? Well…I am serious…can we do anything? should we? WHAT?
What should we do? Cost benifit analysis:
On the one hand you have technology and industry. Our lifespans being over 30 years, our ability to feed ourselves, our ability to alter our environment, the liberation of significant fractions of humanity from agrarian slavery, our immunity to chronic disease, our ability to understand each other and communicate and travel, the free time for serious philosophy and truly rational thinking : All of these stem directly from this. Without industry, it all goes away, and you are left with the ancient world.
On the other hand, you have the not so tender mercies of nature with a medieval level of technology - which is basically all that you can have when you forcibly remove people’s industrial tendencies. You would have plagues and widespread famine. Only a small proportion of humanity will be able to feed themselves, much less grow “wealthy” in any sense of the word. All the usual natural disasters would still afflict us, only now we wouldn’t have the capacity to help ourselves in such events: Droughts without irrigation would destroy entire cities, winters without heat would kill significant fractions of the population.
What is the upside to giving up our technology and industrial capacities? Supposedly global warming will not continue, and in 100 years, the earth will be 4C cooler on average than it would have been had we continued with our civilized existence.
That’s it. That’s the trade off. Make any percentage of technological sacrifice and end up with a possible proportional reduction in the 4 degrees of warming.
Ahhhh, but what good do all those modern conveiniances do if there is no one to enjoy them? Humanity will be paying for its current activities for a long time to come and unless something is done now things will get worse, not better.
If you take the long view, the cost/benefit analysis is clearly on the side of reducing global emissions. If developing nations need a push, well, that’s OK. However, it is inexcusable for the United States to ignore Global Warming when it is developed enough to actually do something to reduce its emissions.
No one around to enjoy them? Who will be around to enjoy your idealized fantasy of a benevolent environment?
Humanity will be capable of dealing with whatever nature throws at us, but only if we keep our technology. Where we begin “paying” is if we give up the capacity to deal with nature. Then things are going to get significantly worse. With electricity, we can pump water and run irrigation. With steam shovels we can rearrrange the landscape, build sea-walls, turn hillsides into arable land. We can deal with climate change. Can we survive another dark age?
I view all of modernity as too high a price to pay for a slightly cooler climate.
Cost/benefit analysis? What?
It was Maynard Kenyes who said: In the long run we are all dead.
‘Without industry, it all goes away, and you are left with the ancient world.’
This is not true. Sustainable development does not mean reverting back to the ancient world? What makes you think that to stop Global Warming we have to ‘dismantle the built environment’ back to prehistoric times.
Thanks to technology we can probably ‘improve our envrioment’ not the opposite. We are still at the ‘early’ stages of technology…we are the…first be lurch after world industrialisation…the future looks hopeful…we might trade in oil for other energy efficient methods of power…
New energy will make obsolete old energy. Just as new medicines, more or less, make obsolete the old practicies…
We need to think more creatively - cultural change to improve sustainable development does not mean - blow society back to prehistoric times, logistically, this would take about another 2000years, which is insane.
We need to think within our situation - we need to problem solve with the tools we have, sustianability is the key ideas, the key concept…not ‘back to agrarian pre capital society’ not back to Feudal society…but forward to a society that is built to last…not to degenerate
Your argument doesn’t make sense. We needn’t return to a dark age to reduce our emissions. Run irrigation? Have you even been to California and seen how damaging and expensive it is to do that? You are taking the argument to an extreme which really isn’t necessary.
More catalytic converters, better catalytic elements, less reliance upon fossil fuels (Solar power is presently cheaper than oil, did you know that? With a little work Nuclear can be dirt cheap) . . . these are all attainable goals.
I intend to move to higher ground…
The idea isn’t to relinquish all technology. The idea is to spend time (while we’ve got it) to revise our current technology so that it has a less drastic effect on the only environment in the solar system that we can survive in (currently.)
I think we should do something about this issue. People need to be informed that you can’t keep pumping the planet blastingly full of certain chemicals and expect nothing to happen, things will change. When there is an action there usually is some reaction, people should understand this logic.
I think humans will still survive if the planet get’s really warm, (unless it get’s “REALLY” warm. there is just so much capacity to think when our lives are on the line. We could live underground, and feed ourselves by many different ways. put a bunch of solar pannels on the ground, and enjoy life bellow, Ok, I’m kidding, I don’t want to rent an apartment 10 stories underground either, but I’m saying life finds a way . . . but having rambled a bit, I think we need to just stop being idiots, and actually start curbing what is heating things up.
According to Lyotard the most important ‘crisis’ facing mankind is that in 4.5 billion years the sun is going to die and then we’re totally fucked. Obviously he’s more eloquent than that (see The Inhuman for details) but I wonder if any of you on this thread can tease out his point in making such an obviously false claim…
I think the Earth will balance itself out…
During the last “warm spike” the atlantic conveyor belt shut off causing a massive cool down, which produced what is now called “the little ice age” It reached it’s cold peak in the early 1800’s.
i think some scientists tend to think of the earth as a system with "checks and balances… like, the earth doesn’t have any form of feedback to correct, iterations in the environment.
Another thing to throw into the loop, is the fact that we ourselves are cooling the earth with aerosols, exhaust, and jet contrails… all of which form high altitude clouds that reflect the sun’s heat back into space.
So, in conclusion, global warming… no big threat.
Peak oil? possibly a worry. Certainly more so than global warming, and one we can prevent. Brazil is 90% dependant on corn oil for fuel.
“You can start with pickin’ strawberries. Then you can work your way up to those goddamn bananas!”
Chong’s father- Up In Smoke.
Seriously I think we should make oil companies public so there is less resistence to the idea of mass producing solar/electrical powered vehicles. The combustion engine was great and all…but we’ve moved beyond that. How embarrassing to be known as the only intelligent humanoid to be using fossil fuels still.
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Meh. It won’t have too much effect in my lifetime…so, I’m not feeling to hard pressed to start worrying about my future right now.
To be honest with you, I think the most rational, realistic thing that we can do about Global Warming right now is to start being “cleaner” about the chemicals that we are producing (i.e. through cleaner-burning cars, etc.).
Just my humble opinions, anyways. 
Part of the issue is as ever ‘the media’…global warming is a grandiose abstraction and as such almost incomprehensible.
Pollution, however, is a much more tangible reality, I wonder if we can say that pollution as a collective phenomenon, in cities and states, is a ‘real observable aspect’ of global warming.
Perhaps the issue is not to ‘save the world’ but to ‘clean it’ by implementing ‘sustainable growth’ and ‘ethical use of waste and chemicals’. I have said this before, I’m sure…the issue is perhaps best addressed at a local level…with local councils implementing ‘effective’ policy in terms of waste management, improvment in pollution problem solving methods.
I simply think that there needs to be an encouraged drive to ‘deal with these problems right now’. Procrastination is perhaps one of the biggest diseases of man and yet it is very relaxing…dear, dear…get cleaning…
This is so true! 
And what is procrastination other than a form of fear?
As for the Sun’s expiration date approx. 4.5 billion years from now; I say, “Fear ye not!”.
If we manage to abstain from nuking the whole earth and universe by then, chances are, we will be living on another planet. Or, we end up staying on the earth, and get fried.
To be honest with you, I feel that if humanity could have rid itself completely of all procrastination 100 years ago, we might have aready been living in space by now. Who knows?
Bear in mind, however, it takes something like 8 minutes for the sun’s light to reach us, so we won’t experiece any negative effects until about 8 minutes after the sun explodes.
I saw on TV that Iceland is switching to hydrogen!
So, I will present my prediction and general belief about pollution, if hydrogen actually works. There’s the saying that you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. That means that you have to make a mess in order to make something good. Well, all of the dirty and pollution have lead up to developing a much cleaner energy source. Once fully developed and implemented the clean tech will last much longer than the dirty tech lasted, and over time damage (if there really is any) will return to normal. So, luddites are an have been work.
So, whether hydrogen is the thing or not I don’t know, but I am generally proposing that more technology is needed to solve the problem and not less, and if it doesn’t solve it then it will be a return to nature anyway.
the problem with fuel cells:
Currently fuel cell technology uses platinum electrodes which are hideously expensive and extremely rare. Their are very few platinum mines.
Hydrogen is not even close to the BTU’s of Oil(s), including vegetable oil replacements. (like what Brazil did). It will take alot more hydrogen to run the economy then it would liquid fuel.
For the first time in human history, we’ll be switching to a less efficient energy source. BUT, make no switch it’s absolutely urgent to make the switch before oil production dissapears.
I believe that was Hitler who said that.
I disagree. It’s efficiency is going to be a problem. Unless we are bent on putting little mini nuclear reactors in every car, no other solution presents the grand efficiency and energy potential of gasoline.
I think the ideal solution is a small hybrid-diesel engine, with two to three cyclinders. We then convert it to run on bio-diesel, and left over cooking oil. Such a vehicle if designed correctly would have far fewer pollutants, and be far more efficient than any other option on the table currently.
I believe that was Hitler who said that.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day!
While agree that dirty tech will lead to cleaner tech we need a reason to make the transition. The oil industry has no reason to switch over until the last possible moment, nor does the car industry.
England’s Industrial Revolution was later than the Continental Industrial Revolution, and England’s was better. America’s was later still, and better yes. The Wirdschaftswunder of Germany was because of forced modernization in the 1950’s . . . and Japan has the same deal only slightly delayed.
How do you propose that we force world-wide modernization?