ETA: And see, me and Mike agree on the "green" approach. Most reasonable people agree on most of the issues, despite what TV political hacks tell us everyday.
Ultimately we have two choices here. Number one: we reduce carbon emissions. This costs trillions of dollars, and results in LOTS of economic hardship. Number two: we wait and see what happens. I highly doubt most of the speculative repercussions are sound.
It seems to me, a reactive approach is best when we don't know for sure that a proactive approach (especially when it is exceedingly expensive) will do much of anything.
Oh but there is. See this
wikipedia article
Cyparagon: I think you've fallen into a bit of a fallacy with regards to "things we should be doing", one that a LOT of smart people fall into.
See, "climate change" doesn't require any unique solution. There is another reason to do every single thing that "climate change" requires of us.
It's funny, global warming has turned into the strawman of environmentalism. There are umpteen reasons to ween ourselves off of oil, there are umpteen reasons to not use coal for electricity production, there are umpteen reasons to not use natural gas, there are umpteen reasons to plant trees and stop clearcutting forests. These are all the things we should be doing if global warming is truly a problem, but there are umpteen OTHER reasons to be doing every one of things things.
The biggest of course, is oil. We cut our dependence on oil, and we cut our dependence on the middle east, and we can tell all the OPEC countries and the entire middle east where they can shove whatever they'd like to shove in that place.
-Our economy loses that anchor known as gas prices that, at times, drags the entire thing down, often at the whim of a tyrant.
-We stop pumping oil out of the ground and scaring the landscape.
-We stop putting all the OTHER pollutants into the air (smog, acid rain, the examples are plentiful).
-We are never in danger of running out of oil if we stop using it (I see what you mean Mike about people saying "we're about to run out" for a long time, but the fact is, oil is finite. Since it is finite, it HAS to run out sometime, even If i don't know when that is.).
-In addition to unsavory countries, we can stop dealing with unsavory companies, and tell Exxon where they can shove whatever it is they'd like to shove in that place (I personally have no problem with Exxon as a company, but I understand some of you probably do).
-We stop with spills like the Valdez and the thousands of other leaks that have occurred over the decades all over the world.
See? All GREAT things we can do for our country(ies) and for our world, that have nothing to do with global warming, but those things get torn down anyway because of the distraction of global warming. People mention oil, and global warming comes up, when really there are all these other reasons to recycle, and to turn your lights off, and to carpool to use less gas, and to buy the Energy Star appliance over the non-Energy Star appliance, and the list goes on and on.
