06-09-2019, 06:12 AM
quote:
Originally posted by glinda
Dude, the climate is changing, human population is growing, we keep dumping our waste into the environment and the temps are going up. What else are you waiting for?
Catastrophe... Meaningful change is not going to happen until conditions become so catastrophic that there is no other choice. All governments (nearly) rule with the consent of their population (North Korea and some other countries may arguably be exceptions). Any government that imposed energy or procreation limits on their population that are sufficient to address climate change in the near term, would be removed before those policies could be enforced because most populations are too ignorant of, or too indifferent to, events two or three generations hence to tolerate the needed constraints.
Hawaii is an excellent example of that: our politicians break their arms patting themselves on the back over how green Hawaii is, yet we burn more oil today than we did four decades ago while we have multiple resources that could displace much of that oil use. But a hand full of squawkers can stop new geothermal development; implementation of wind energy; and we are going to go bankrupt paying for base load solar...
Are they going to close the airports to incoming tourists? big oil drain there. Are they going to limit families to one child? not likely; Are they going to limit immigration into the state; can't do that... Near term political gains always outweigh long term security: history is awash in examples...
In our current public opinion driven climate, nothing meaningful can happen until disaster is underway - by which time, it's likely too late for most to survive.