At some point, I’m going to turn this into a longer and better linked post, but this has got to be said. Right now. Again.
The worst thing, the most depressing thing, about global warming, isn’t the melting ice cap or the short time horizon. It certainly isn’t the current state of our technological advancement or knowledge, which is largely sufficient to the problem. It’s the stupidity, inactivity, timidity, shortsightedness and fecklessness of humanity’s ruling elites. Really. That’s why I think the proper way to refer to it is as a suicide pact, because it’s both deliberate and avoidable.
Consider that we’ve got at present tremendous financial liquidity. The environmentally unsustainable suburbs are emptying out like mad due to wave upon wave of foreclosures and debt-ridden consumers mailing their keys to the bank. There’s a large reserve labor force of unemployed, underemployed, and discouraged workers. Fuel is becoming more expensive, but is still cheap and abundant enough that it could be put to use setting the country on a path towards sustainability. Altered land use is one of the largest causes of climate change and industrialization, deforestation, suburbanization, and a mad paving craze have been exacerbating every single (very expensive) climate-related problem. These crises are making our current system unsustainable, pushing us into financial meltdown in the US and destabilizing world markets, which is going to have the inevitable result of decreasing this society’s ability to well address even one of these problems, let alone all of them at once. All together though, I think these issues could solve each other.
Shorter, the scenario: We have a lot of money, people, recently available land, and resources. This is not always going to be true, and if society were better governed, it would be seized as a golden opportunity for positive change rather than an excuse for more of the same.
But what, what, I ask you, is the solution that our brilliant leaders are putting on the table as a necessary part of ‘the mix’ of fixes? Nuclear power. Which takes years to get online, is unreliable in drought conditions such as those predicted in all the global warming scenarios, is fabulously expensive, and can’t be supported in any way as an open market solution even though it’s a fairly mature technology.
So please understand, in all ways, that the greatest tragedy of global warming, this very serious and urgent climate crisis, is inaction. Is the belief in human powerlessness in the face of a problem we ourselves had the power to create. Is the blinkered imbecility that allows leaders to make decisions exactly as if money were edible. Is the trap within which the public is caught that makes it difficult to have the time and resources to do more than buy what they’re offered and try to chill out a little bit every evening by the flickering glow of reality television.
And in that frustration, there’s the seed of hope. We did this to ourselves. We can’t change the inexorable laws of physics that are destabilizing our weather. Yet we can change each other’s minds and willingness to act, we can help each other find the way out.
“If one thing could be different, everything could be different.” - G.I. Gurdjieff
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You’re right - it’s going to have to be us - you and I - who take the lead and start transforming things. We need to incite the companies we work for and buy from to change their practices. Hell, we need to start our own business to market sustainable solutions. We need to get trained in science, engineering and business, so we can bring sustainable technologies to the market. I can’t place all the blame on the elites. The American public, as a whole, needs to step up and recapture the entrepreneurial spirit that brought us the technology we enjoy today - and combine it with the wisdom of sustainability that will carry us into the future.
Actually, I have seen a few folks blogging here that are engineering or science graduates. It’s good to have them around.
Speaking of basic engineering: the water issue affects ALL thermoelectric power systems. If you use algae generated ethanol or solar thermal… anything that uses thermal conversion needs water or equivalent (e.g., there are reactor designs where the turbine exhaust is cooled by air or fuel cells that need less water for cooling). My technical training would say to put the eggs in many baskets: fuel cells, geothermal, renewables, and even some nuclear. Most engineers I know want all of the options on the table.
A solid post. This just needs to be repeated over and over.
“We have a lot of money, people, recently available land, and resources. This is not always going to be true, and if society were better governed, it would be seized as a golden opportunity for positive change rather than an excuse for more of the same.”
We need politicians and business leaders alike to understand the huge opportunity we have here that could solve many environmental, economic, and social problems.
To repeat what Angeline said: The American public, as a whole, needs to step up and recapture the entrepreneurial spirit that brought us the technology we enjoy today - and combine it with the wisdom of sustainability that will carry us into the future.