Actually, Bob, we are the major country that, in your words, "does not give a flip". Or, to be more precise, this administration and a certain number of people who compose the "deniers" and the "delayers" apparently "do not give a flip."
The road is long and hard, there is no "one" solution or magic bullet that will change things. We obviously aren't going to stop using fossil fuels overnight. it will take a mix of solutions, and concerted effort on the part of individuals, companies, farmers, governments and a great deal of R&D if there is still any hope of averting or even adapting to what is happening. For anyone who is interested, I suggest reading blogs like climateprogress.org, www.gristmill.org or realclimate.org for starters. Or, better for a start, read the essays by Spencer Weart that I alluded to in my earlier post. They will give important background information. Try reading the executive summary of the IPCC report. Read a book like With Speed and Violence, by Fred Pearce, which is not only informative but also a great read. Try reading Jonathan Cowie's Climate Change for a reasonably up to date biologist's perspective (although it isn't for an absolute beginner--the Weart essays or Pearce's book are probably better for that).
Read, read, read. If you listen to the Deniers' arguments long enough, you realize that they repeat the same 10 things over and over and over again, and quote the same 10 or 12 people over and over and over again. The blogs I referred to above answer them all. Tirelessly. Endlessly. You can search the blogs for replies.
More to the point than the question "What do we do when the rest of the world does not give a flip?" is how do we change our way of energizing the world when so there is much infrastructure in place that enables it, and so many vested interests in place that depend on it? It is a massive "tragedy of the commons" in the making. I would be the last person to suggest that it is a case of mere "greed," although there are times when Exxon has gone over the top, and occasionally reminds me of tobacco executives in the 60s, 70s and 80s.
One thing that people can do is at least stop making flip, specious arguments, and acknowledge that the scientists who done the research on this aren't saying what they are saying because they have a "political" motive. This is utter nonsense. If they are wrong, it is because there is something fundamentally wrong with some of their scientific assumptions, assumptions that have been built up for a long time and have been subjected to a good deal of scepticism, argument, debate and testing for decades now. They aren't doing "Stalinist science" (or "Jewish" science, as Hitler called a good deal of nuclear physics back in the 30s). |
