11-23-2009, 06:44 PM
Quote:Pollution is not a symptom of wealth. It is a result of consumption. Wealth begets more consumption per person, but that does not eliminate the consumption of the population. Think of the problems of 6 billion people burning wood for cooking and heat.What is wealth, but consumption? (Well, savings. But people only save so much.) People consume the vast majority of their income, and they consume it buying things that cause pollution - fuels, uses for fuels, products that require fuels to make. If 6 billion people burned wood for cooking and heat, there would be a problem, but it would be a pretty small one compared to what we have today. Poverty simply does not generate the scale of emissions that wealth does, so long as the wealthy are using coal and oil as primary fuel sources.
Ideally, we want to get away from polluting energy sources, yet maintain our wealth. That means nuclear, plus the usual mix of "green power", coupled with a switch towards electrical rather than fuel-based machinery and transport.
Quote:The problem with the current rush off of carbon fuels is that they are more dilute energy sources effectively requiring the population to go cold turkey off of energy. And by cold, I mean very cold. However, it does nothing to address the problem of a reduction and limitations in commodities, or the other effects of over population.Explain to me how we're going to solve global warming by reducing population, when the correlation between pollution per capita and low birth rate is almost perfect? Without causing all the detrimental side effects you're so worried about? I don't see how it's possible. High birth rate countries aren't polluters, and low birth rate polluting countries can't shrink much faster - unless we're going to solve the problem with Soylent Green.
-Jester