Kudos, it's not every day a haughty arrogant condescending liberal admits to having a Bull Shit degree.
I agree with both of those. My issues with GW are not with these basic concepts but along the lines of the following: - The climate is always changing, completely independent of man's action, and on comprehensibly short timescales. It was only a few hundred years ago that we had the "Little Ice Age." It's by no means certain that merely letting the natural fluctuations play out would prove less costly, less destructive etc. than whatever effects GW will eventually have. They could well be incomparably more destructive - if, for instance, the Earth were to enter a full-blown ice age. I have very little confidence in our ability to accurately predict either those natural fluctuations, or the eventual magnitude and effects of GW. - On the other hand, anything which retards economic growth (accumulation of capital) most certainly would leave us worse off in the future, and much worse off on scales of a century or more. Imagine if we had discovered global warming in 1750 and implemented remedial measures which reduced global economic growth by something like 1%/yr: billions of people would be today enjoying the living standards of Congo or someplace, world population would be much greater, there would consequently be more conflict, famine, and overcrowding etc. All for no perceptible improvement in the day-to-day weather patterns. - Related to the above, we're rapidly exhausting our fossil-fuel stocks anyway. Prices are going up and usage will fall. The best thing would be to allow the economy to accumulate as much capital as possible, making the deployment of expensive alternative-energy (and also therefore 'clean') technologies feasible. Government taxes, regulations, and subsidies will squander vast quantities of resources without delivering any certain result or improvement over what would happen anyway.
Wouldn't you think that conservative and conservationism would go hand in hand? Why is waste and pollution something to stand behind? What is wrong with recycling and all the tenets that go with it? Why is destroying the Amazon a good thing? Much of this seems at odds with the conservative movement, why not conserve? c
The problem with conservation, and the proper accounting of the unintended and/or unknown consequences of Man's industry, and the subsequent demand for compensation for those consequences, is that it's hard on profits. As the conservative party has become the party of Capital, I think that's why there's a split between political conservatives and environmental conservation.
I can understand that, but to take it one step further. Much like re-stocking the fish pond, or planting a tree for each on cut down, is there not some common sense to be found here? Major corporations do both, replenish fish and plant trees. [ Deforestation, and over fishing are, of course, just parallels, but does this not make sense? c
The wife and I pay extra for a recycling bin to be picked up. From home at least we recycle more paper plastic glass and aluminum that we throw away.
Excellent, common sense in my mind. I wish we could apply the same logic to a more global environment, no pun intended. I understand that we still have to worry about China and other polluting countries, but we should lead the way. c
I don't get a newspaper and we don't buy pop, anyway aluminum is not pollution and neither is silicon dioxide. I think that about sums up the most common elements in the earth's crust. An aluminum can on the ground is not a chemical pollutant, it may be unpleasing to the eye but pollution it is not.