Quote:Van: My point was that political will is needed to make the needed environmental changes without driving the world economy into the toilet. I've been watching this train wreck my entire life, while people run around defocused on crisis followed by crisis. I studied the impending end of the hydrocarbon economy while in high school in the late 1970's, and wrote a thesis on energy alternatives while at the university in the 1980's. Yet, auto manufacturers are still delivering only the minimal restrictions while we consumers are still demanding 6 mpg muscle cars and Hummers.
I would just like to see a little political leadership on this, and in fact something as simple as
- We have a big problem, <>
- We need to do these things now <>
- Your children might survive.<>
[st]And to Jester from a different thread: If the world economy hits the crapper, starving parents will not be thinking about conservation. So it's not the "poor American" who is forced to pay 1$ per KwH I'm concerned about. It's the cronically unemployed Central or South American parent who has joined a paramilitary group bent on destruction.
Most unemployed Central and South Americans, especially the most marginal, work in industries with very little environmental consequence. (At least outside of Brazil, because of the forest, and Argentina/Chile/Uruguay, due to greater industrialization.)
And, as the collapse of the USSR more or less proved, the economic devastation of insurrection more than compensates for the drop in environmental awareness. Ecologically speaking, a worldwide revolution (sans nukes) would probably be fantastic for our greenhouse gas output. Industry can't pollute if it can't operate, and it can't operate if there's no stable market.
-Jester