Thursday, May 11, 2006

The Perfect Problem

"A recent book by Yale University titled 'Americans and Climate Change' called global warming 'the perfect problem,' meaning that it is nearly impossible to solve and is clouded with enough uncertainty to likely cause continued discussion rather than action. "

http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=communique&newsid=11867

And that is exactly what we're seeing happen right now. Let's quit talking and do SOMETHING!

My mom went to the Caribbean a while ago and told me about a storm warning they had. Alarms went off, everyone evacuated the beaches and went to high ground. The "tsunami" ended up being a five-foot swell and everything was ok. The locals said this happens all the time but people still take it seriously.

If we all start being more cautious about our energy use and, in 100 years, it turns out that the "7 billion tons of carbon per year" we dump into the Earth's atmosphere annually (just try to conceptualize that amount...15,432,358,352,941 [that's trillions] pounds, 493 million new GTIs, 870,100 Eiffel Towers, 19,170 Empire State buildings... in the air... every year) means nothing then so be it. We all spent less money, drilled for less oil and became conscious about our consumption (which has positive impacts on other aspects of our lives).

But if we do nothing and this science turns out correct, we're going to look pretty foolish.

"In other words, we simply cannot continue to use the atmosphere as a dumping ground for industrial output."

Amen to that!

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