Ronald Reagan’s Legacy: The End of Civilization As We Know It.

by shep

It is now becoming clear that, without some dramatic progress on carbon sequestration or an even more dramatic and potentially dangerous act of desperation, the earth’s climate is headed toward a disastrous tipping point in our, or our children’s, lifetimes.

To recap:

Arguments against:
It gets hot every epoch or so
Scientists are sometimes wrong
We might get hit by an asteroid, so WTF
The commies hate my Hummer
The Sun is hot
Even if true, it probably wouldn’t kill everything and I could grow coconuts in Minnesota
Science is hard

Arguments for:
Spiking CO2
Measurable warming
Melting glaciers, ice sheets and frozen tundra
Increasing cycles of floods and droughts
Rising sea levels
Dying tropical reefs
Dying species and strange migrations of animals, plants and diseases.

So, what should be done? If the methane-spewing cow is out of the barn, why go out in the heat to close the barn door now?

Because, even if we learn how to capture and sequester carbon and filter the sun by blasting sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, we still have good reasons to wean ourselves off our carbon fuel addiction:

1) We can. We started using fossil fuels for our energy needs in the century before last. It replaced whale oil. Considering how far our technology has come since then, to say that this is a cultural throwback is an understatement of epoch proportions. Even though the idea gives the CEO of Exxon Mobile the dry heaves, he and his ilk are the only ones who won’t profit mightily by developing new alternatives.

2) It makes us wage stupid, bloody wars. Need I say more here?

3) Since a great deal of our energy consumption goes to complete waste, the cost of doing something can be quite small. What does it cost to build our houses facing south to take advantage of solar gain? Who doesn’t want to be able to work from home when there’s no need to slog through traffic to the office? You actually save money by walking or riding a bike instead of driving.

4) It would be good for us in many other ways. Dismantling the factory farming system and Chinese food imports in favor of locally cultivated food might cost a little more money but at least you’ll be alive to regret it. And advanced nations that get out of the business of making things lose lower skill jobs and become beholden to other nations to lend them money to buy the stuff they make.

Or, let’s all take a fossil-fueled cruise down that river in Egypt. Let’s face it: our technology expanded faster than our wisdom. Natural systems seeks stasis; wiping mankind off the planet is Mother Nature’s way of restoring earth’s equilibrium.