Ths hysteria on this from the Left has been some combination of frightening and hilarious.
"Trump’s Executive Order Threatens to Wreck Earth as a Livable Planet for Humans" https://t.co/0NrN1CDdMo
— hockey schtick (@hockeyschtick1) March 29, 2017
But in fact, as Roy Spencer points out, the (illegal) “Clean Power Plan” was literally going to increase poverty and kill people, while almost certainly having no discernible effect on climate.
The left threatens life on this planet every time they have power by making nuclear war more likely. You don’t make war less likely with appeasement. Real fear of the consequences should make people more rational. Not the left’s hysteria and myopia.
Nothing says SCIENCE!!! like pearl-clutching, fainting-couch-hiding-under, we’re-all-gonna-die melodrama.
It worked for Carl Sagan. People don’t understand physics but love to talk about the weather.
Given the rampant hysteria, how long until the reaction includes overt, even organized, violence?
Given the rampant hysteria, how long until the reaction includes overt, even organized, violence?
Technically, it already happened at the Standing Rock protests which appears to even have a person injured by their own IED.
From what I understand of the Vietnam War protests and terrorism (which I suppose is as good a comparison as any), that it was driven by the draft, conscription to an unpopular war and spurred on by several particularly violent clashes and attacks, particularly, the Kent State shootings in 1970. So we had a combination of a direct threat to the protestors, mostly college students, and an authoritarian crackdown that was clearly in the wrong.
Today, there could be a similar heavy-handed response, say due to poorly trained police officers or such. But I don’t see the direct threat. The climate isn’t going to be much different at the end of Trump’s tenure. Something else will have to trigger widespread protest.
The direct threat doesn’t have to be real or rational. What matters is that a sufficient number perceive the threat. And there are plenty of prominent democrat figures claiming Trump climate policies will destroy us.
Something else will have to trigger widespread protest.
Ya, the mere presence of a Republican in the White House.
All this hand wringing bores me. The climate problem (which, unlike Rand, I think is most likely real and ultimately mostly caused by CO2 emission) is a long term one. The course of actions will be decided by economics not by moralizing.
Fortunately, as usual, technology is driving sweeping social change like nothing else does.
I expect renewable energy sources to continue to rapidly decline in price. Most coal will be left in the ground as worthless, even with no carbon tax. And I expect atmospheric CO2 capture to become cheaper as well, especially when driven by dirt-cheap future renewable power sources (inflation-adjusted < $.01/kWh for solar in a couple of decades.) A main destination for captured CO2 will be enhanced oil recovery (EOR), so we're going to have a lot of oil for a very long time. Every major oil field (and most minor ones) will get CO2 EOR in this scenario.
You may be right about all those things.
But if the planet does start getting to warm due to CO2 we could manage that by having less of the sunlight reach Earth. Then we could let the plants enjoy the abundance of food.
The point being there are many ways to solve the problem should it occur. No reason to empoverish everyone after scaring them half to death.
The comments after Spencer’s article were interesting. Those who seriously believe that there is no connection between today’s comfort and well-being (on every economic level) and the availability of cheap energy simply baffle me. A couple are pathological, in that they believe we are worse off with fossil fuels than we were without them, due to some unspecified “damage” to the environment. But then, after Wednesday’s climate hearing, I guess the number of people living in an alternate reality is larger than I though.