hamburger wrote:ican wrote :
Quote:One absolute solution for preventing any human caused climate change whatsoever is for us all humans to commit suicide.
i wouldn't recommend suicide . manure piles actually create a great deal of heat .
hbg
In other words be careful that the solution you pick will not create far worse problems than the problem you think you might possibly, perhaps solve. I would rather solve the problem of keeping each of us within a livable temperature range regardless of our local climates, than solve the problems produced by limiting our access to affordable food, clothing, shelter, transportation, recreation, and defense.
i certainlly endorse your statement . let's make things better , not worse .
there are already many ways in which lowered consumption of energy has had positive effects on the population .
pollution reduction certainly results in better health .
i'm sure you remember how the north-american automobile industry kept fighting tooth and nail against ANY fuel standards . so foreign companies produced more fuel efficient cars . low and behold , consumers bought them and the north-american automobile industry started to play catch-up . if the n.a. industry would have been in the forefront they could have conquered the worldmarket .
imo n.a. industries could easily be world leaders in many industries that are able "to get more bang for the buck " .
it just seems to me that some have become sidetracked for some time now , but i have difficulty understanding why .
have some corporations perhaps become "calcified" ?
hbg
The US Auto industry did build smaller and more fuel efficient cars at the urgings of President Carter and Congress, among others, and nobody wanted them. It was precisely at that time that the downward spiral of the US auto industry began and it has never fully recovered. Foreign auto makers with fewer pressures on wages and benefits and not strapped by unreasonable union demands could build better cars less expensively than the US could build them at the time. The US auto makers are beginning to produce cars that Americans want again and I hope they will regain their former reputation for quality, people-friendly cars and small trucks. I think things are actually looking up.
In an earlier post, your comment on human generated CO2 being the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back doesn't quite compute. Given the enormous amounts of naturally produced CO2 and the comparatively miniscule amount produced by human activities, if the camel is that much overloaded already, I think we should be looking for an additional camel instead of trying to avoid adding on the straw.
In an effort to do no harm, let's stop what seems to be silly nonsense about stopping CO2 emissions that it is apparent, at least to me, isn't going to happen. Delaying the inevitable, whatever the inevitable might be, by a few weeks or months or years is probably not the best use of our time and talent. Let's instead focus on improving the quality of life for everybody within the framework of changing climate or whatever we need to do. Yes it makes sense to research and develop alternate sources of energy. Yes it makes sense to conserve energy in a tight market with infinte resources. Yes it makes sense to not pollute our air, water, and soil, to manage renewable resources responsibly, and to preserve the natural beauty of our environment. It doesn't make sense to try to alter the normal fluctuations occuring in a global environment.
History tells us that prosperous people are in a far better position to and are far more likely to do all these things than are poor people. Seems to me the focus should be on helping people to become more prosperous and thus put them on our side in the interest of preserving the best that our planet has to offer us.
