No, I'm not saying we have to worry about a couple of degrees or even 10 or 20 degrees average increase. A few degrees increase will cause tremendous financial loss, so from purely an economic perspective, I think we should still do something about it to avoid those losses. The cost benefit equation is pretty straight forward.
However, what if CO2 increases continue to accelerate. Because you realize that the problem isn't that CO2 has increased to some abnormal level and is just hanging out there. Rather, the problem is that the rate at which CO2 levels rose was unprecedented and it is still accelerating!
Now you know the theory of compound interest right. The interest on the interest on the interest makes you wealthy. Well if the rate of CO2 increases continues to accelerate at this pace as China and India and Russia and all other developing nations start to industrialize on the scale of Europe and the US, then we could very well drive CO2 levels ever higher and higher, which could then push temperatures to levels that could very well cause mass extinction events, including that of humans.
Imagine a world where the average year round temperature is 200 degrees. What could survive in such a world? Really bad summers have been known to kill hundreds of people in New York and Paris. Imagine if those really bad summers got to 200 degrees and then remained that way year round. Do you think we could really afford to produce all that electricity for A/C from burning our fossil fuels? Probably not. Most A/Cs would last that long from that much continued use.
I'd say the failure of imagination is the worst fault of this Presidency, because he is setting a very bad example for all Americans. Look folks. Nothing is for free. If you never clean your house, then eventually it will become such a pigstye that even you won't want to live in it or it will become so disease infested that you won't be able to live in it. Same thing goes for the earth. Pollute it enough and you won't be able to live on it. Simple enough.
You guys are all still debating whether the house is on fire or not and indeed whether fire can kill you or not, but folks the house is on fire. Forget the debate...get out of the house! Then once you've done that, you can debate in safety to your hearts content. Let's move to renewable fuels and then we can all debate to our hearts content whether fossil fuels and industrialization would have spelled disaster for us or not, because then we have plenty of time for the debate. Why take the risk and do nothing, when we can solve the problem and enrich our nation in the process? It's a no brainer. |
