A reader elsewhere asks regarding the glowarming debate: – Is it [global warming] real or is it not? What differance does it make?
Whether the “planet is warming or not” (and the real question, whether human activity is the primary if not the only cause), and “what difference does it make”, is important in this critical respect:
If you are going to propose solutions that require fundamental, if not draconian changes to the status quo, which includes a (nominally at least) economic “system” of captialistic, private-ownership-based, free-market enterprise for establishing the allocation of resources, according to the unlimited needs and desires of individuals to provide for their wants, improve their well-being, and so act in pursuit of their own happiness as they define it – then you had better have a pretty firm and accurate understanding of both the “problems” that you assert, the actual underlying causes of the so-called “problem”, and the likely effects (or lack of effect) of the changes or actions you propose to “fix” the problem.
This is the crux of the debate at hand. Those who assert the total culpability of humanity in the present global trend of marginal increase in average climate temperature are understandably promoting “solutions” that require either a drastic reduction in the levels of world-wide production and consumption, especially of energy – and/or equally oppressive population, political, and economic controls.
If those who dissent from this view are in actuality correct, and it is not humanity but something as natural and cyclical as the relative levels of solar output and background cosmic radiation playing a role in reducing the production of a heat-reflective cloud layer – then all of the proposed “reductions” in humanity’s carbon footprint and economic activity will not make a difference, will be un-necessarily destructive, and may indeed exacerbate the problem of adapting various populations to the actual (whatever they turn out to be) effects of a warming climate – whether or not the phenomena is permanant, or is as some suspect, a naturally transient event.
Recycling is “good for the community”? Perhaps, but why? It currently requires in some cases more resources and energy to “recycle” some materials, than not to. In some areas, items that are collected for “recycling” are actually being landfilled, because not enough market for the collected material currently exists.
Using less electricity is “good for the planet”? Again, perhaps – but why? One might argue that increased use of “clean” electricity is much better than if 6 billion people suddenly went back to cooking their meals over a wood fire, or heating their homes with coal.
Gas costs a lot? Sure does – but not nearly enough to suit some people.
Pound for pound, petroleum fuels still provide the most convenient, transportable, safe, and efficient form of controlled energy release available, for everything from ground, air, and sea transportation to the heating of homes and the conduct of industry.
Sure, smaller engines (and cars) might help – although beyond a certain point, for every number of pounds that you shave off of a vehicle, the impact survivability rating of the vehicle goes down, decreasing road safety exponentially.
Technology does a lot, but high technology still requires a lot of energy to develop and maintain.
If you are worried about our dependence on “foreign sources”, you might want to talk to the environmentalists, whose legislative and litigative hysterics have effectively prevented the development of additional domestic supply and refining capacity that would significantly mitigate that foreign dependency.
[On a side note, I laughed the other day at the plight of environmentalists in Oregon, whose efforts to "save the river salmon" by restricting logging operations near rivers has led the former timber company owners of those woodlands to sell them off - to residential development - leading to even more urban sprawl, and even greater danger to the river salmon - and leading some environmental activists to desperately call for a return of the timber companies, who at least replanted the trees they cut. Unintended consequences.]
Chemicals lead to so many problems? That’s true – depending on where those chemicals are, and what chemicals you are talking about.
On the other hand, you really would not have much of a life today without them, either. If you doubt that, just try. (I know there are those who do, or who use so-called “organic” alternatives – but the life is certainly much more human-energy intensive than the mainstream, and far more spartan than most people will tolerate.)
Few I suspect would really advocate the unrestrained dumping of persistent toxins in ways that are demonstrably harmful, and for which reasonable and cost-effective remediations exist.
Interestingly, the open and capitalistic free-market societies of the Western republics tend to have a much better response record regarding the problems of environmental pollution than do the closed and centrally-controlled societies of say, China and the former Soviet states, where state-owned industry has created a multitude of the world’s most unimaginably toxic and still uncontained waste sites.
“Overpopulation” is another interesting argument that itself belies the demand for less energy consumption.
As recently as the social-conciousness-raising days of the 1960’s, we were gloomily warned by popular prognosticators like Paul Ehrlich that by the 1970’s, the world’s population would far outstrip the supplies of food and fresh water available, and that mass starvation and widespread death from plague-like disease would be the result.
Simply by taking a straight-edge to population trends and running a pencil line to infinity, it was predicted that “by the 1970s, hundreds of millions would starve to death, hundreds of thousands of people in Los Angles would die from air pollution, a universal age of scarcity would occur by 1985, the US population would collapse to 22 million by 1999, and England would “cease to exist” by 2000.”
Specifically, in 1968 Paul Ehrlich wrote (in “The Population Bomb”):
“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970’s the world will undergo famines–hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.
“At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate, although many lives could be saved through dramatic programs to “stretch” the carrying capacity of the earth by increasing food production.
“But these programs will only provide a stay of execution unless they are accompanied by determined and successful efforts at population control. Population control is the conscious regulation of the numbers of human beings to meet the needs, not just of individual families, but of society as a whole.”
—–
Note how much the rhetoric of impending overpopulation then is hauntingly similar to the heated rhetoric of anthropogenic global warming today.
Of course, we do not live in a static, zero-sum world. Increased standards of living (brought about or reflected by increased energy consumption and technological advances) not only increased productivity enough to keep up with the population growth, but it also led almost invariably to a lower rate of population increase (apart from immigration) due to smaller family sizes in those regions or countries where such increases in living standards have occurred.
Not coincidentally, advances in both production, agriculture, and technology have been the most dramatic in the open and free-market-based economies.
I’m not knocking individual initiative and innovation. If those “little things” that you do to “make a difference” make you feel better about living your life, then by all means – go right ahead. Perhaps if many people freely and willingly do those things, it will make an even bigger (or an actual) difference. Certainly, lead by example – but not by unilateral (though perhaps well-intentioned) bureaucratic mandate.
Go to your garage workshop and develop an alternative car that actually performs as well as (or preferably better than), is as safe as or safer than, costs the same or less than, and has the same range, power, and convenient fuel availability as it’s current internal combustion counterpart – and I and everyone else will soon be sending the ICE the way of the horse-and-buggy after automobiles were inexpensively introduced with the advent of mass production techniques in the early 20th century.
On the other hand, not everything you are instructed that will “make a difference” actually will – and some “differences” may actually make the problems worse – or create new unforeseen ones. Unintended consequences.
As with the Oregon timber and the river salmon, be careful what you wish for.
Electricity sounds like a “clean” alternative – until you consider the generation methods (oil, gas, coal, nuclear, hydro dams, or endlessly massive “wind farms”), the lack of storage for any temporary surplus, and the inefficiencies of power transmission over distance that require even more generation capacity to overcome.
“Just do something now – something, anything, even if it’s the wrong thing” – is a widely-used and generally not unreasonable rule of thumb in leadership classes.
The difference is that in the case of the “anthropogenic global warming” debate, we have ample evidence and reason to suspect that the “problem” at hand is being inaccurately framed and defined based upon clearly erroneous or ill-founded assumptions.
Idealized solutions of centralized planning and command economies cannot withstand real-world comparisons against the results obtained through open societies and free markets – which is why there is little patience among those of a statist or socialist bent for “experimental trials” and requirements for “show me the money” results in such proposals.
Thus perhaps the glowarming activist’s insistance on comprehensive, total, legislative solutions that eliminate any potential to be shown through comparison that one’s underlying assumptions regarding the problem were wrong in the first place.
It’s all or nothing, they say. Doing it by halves, we’re told, just won’t produce the results that we simply must have, in order to avoid total global disaster.
Pardon me folks, if I don’t go all Henney Penny or Loosey Goosey along with you all just yet. Foxy Loxy still has yet to make his full appearance in this tale, after all.
_________________
