@Zetherin,
Zetherin wrote:
As kennethamy pointed out earlier, we have to be practical - a decision that has a heavy impact on economies probably isn't the best choice. Sometimes it's a balancing act, and sometimes, as much as the environmentalists don't like it, our interests come first.
Depends.
Firstly I think Ken indulges in a gross exaggeration when he depicts the thrust of environmentalism as resulting in some sort of time warp where people have to live like the Amish. I don't think that's the desire or the resort of the vast majority of environmentalists - many of whom are probably just as leery of such ideas as anyone else. There will always be some hippy halfwits at demos I suppose - that's the result of that damn "freedom of speech" thing. Most sources of clean energy production are no less technologically advanced than fossil fuel use and employ just as many (if not more) people.
Its disappointing to see you apparently join him in this ludicrous strawman.
Readily available sources of fossil fuels are peaking/have peaked anyway, and to find more either requires the drilling of wells along current frontiers (and frontier drilling is far more likely to result in industrial accidents) or trying to scrape stuff off of shale (which is very energy inefficient - burning one barrel of oil in the hope of gaining four, I think). So to expand the US production of oil is going to cost as much money as building the equivalent of solar panel fields and wind turbines anyhow.
So getting off oil is a good idea in terms of economic future prosperity anyway - even if there weren't issues with regard to the environment. The US would also stop funding the regime in Tehran to the tune of millions of dollars a day by switching to home grown cleaner energy.
There are those who would suffer - those in the oil industry. Though in order to grow clean energy roles to the same degree would create more jobs than it destroys on a net level. So unless you still mourn for those whale oil chaps losing their jobs a century or so ago I'm sure you can envision a likely better outcome within the reasonably short term. The oil chaps are just going to have to be the Luddite martyrs of the 21st century.
Meanwhile whatever problems are created by the processes we indulge in go unaddressed. Your rather simplistic "environmental concerns vs human comforts" model fails to address that the environment is the home of all human lives and systems, and human comforts will be adversely affected by many of the likely effects of things like a continued rise in global temperature.
Now clearly whether this bothers you is a matter of comparing your likely losses to how much you care about those likely losses and that of other people - but to suggest it's simply an equation between your regard for environmental concerns and the practicalities of keeping your pocket full is to ignore the big picture.
