Yet another charming example of climate change creating a feedback loop event. Phenomena such as this also have the unfortunate effect of making other feedback loop events, such as albedo reduction, even worse. Cutting emissions when things start to get dicey won’t magically reverse climate changes overnight in a linear fashion either. We are rapidly heading towards the point of no return, when climate change becomes self-sustaining and snowballs out of control. In other words, if we wait like chipper, aloof little consumers till we have an emergency to develop and transition to sustainable energy, we’ll be far too late, have no viable alternatives, and have front row seats to the end of the world as we know it. And that is not an exaggeration. We essentially will have created the climatological equivalent of a nuclear chain reaction, with the same lovely, life-ending results. Yet the common weak and short-sighted argument remains, “We will adapt and replace our technology if necessary, but changing now will hurt the economy.” But you can’t replace something like Texas or North Dakota. Lose enough land to drought, and you won’t have an economy, rendering the argument moot. Thus far, we lag far behind other developed nations on green energy investment and development. Trusting in the free market to further sustainable sources of power and climate change denial seem to be traits far more common, if not unique, to the US than elsewhere. Remember Solyndra? That fiasco occurred because the Chinese government does actually vigorously invest in green energy and undercut Solyndra and cornered the European market. Yep, China is outpacing us on energy, primarily because they have a realistic long-term, broader perspective on the matter. The market on its own is just not going to propel us towards sustainability anytime soon, mainly because there’s ridiculous amounts of easy money to be made on fossil fuels and we’re the number one nation of oil addicts. Ironically, if we use anything approaching known total oil reserves, we’ll sprint far past the point of no return in a perilously short amount of time. A further irony regarding the economy is that there are far more potential jobs to be had in green energy than oil or coal. For example, there are 2.4 million green jobs in the US. How many coal miners? Eighty thousand. There are some glimmers of hope on the horizon from the private sector. Shell, of all companies, has openly acknowledged that the future lies in going green. It remains to be seen how seriously they will invest and transition away from oil. All these things considered, how exactly is investing in green energy a bad idea economically? And how does anyone against doing so get anywhere near public office? weather/news/science/environment/sleeping-climate-giant-stirring-arctic-20130701
Posted on: Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:27:19 +0000
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