DBlevins writes
quote:
Do you recall what happened when the government started listening to the scientists and began to ban or limit the use of CFC's?
And indeed there were and still are many ozone hole deniers. In fact, I was talking to one the other day. He was convinced big brother governments banned CFC because it benefited man kind and the Earth and big brother didn't want that.
Unfortunately, global warming is not anything like the CFC issue. It was a fairly smooth transition from CFC to other, less harmful chemicals in the industries. But with global warming everything contributes to it. Burning wood contributes to global warming. Driving to work contributes to global warming. Heating your home contributes to global warming.
In fact, in order to feed this many people in the world today we have to directly contribute to global warming with massing livestocks and huge slaughtering industry. Hell, even farming contributes to global warming.
Sir Arthur C. Clark proposed a solution in one of his monolith novels. He proposed we cover large portions of the planet's surface with material that would deflect the solar energy into space to cool down the Earth. While I'm not saying this is the solution we should seek, I am saying in order to solve global warming (which is the biggest thing that is happening on the planet) literally everyone in the world has to agree to some unified method.
And the only way we can get the whole world to cooperate is to shut out the opposition (global warming deniers), which last time I checked was the majority of the world.
Like some others on here, I am convinced that there is little we can do stop global warming. We are currently at 380 ppm or so. Many believe the point of no return is around 450. But since we're never going to be able to convince the opposition, the point of no return might as well have been 350, which we already passed long ago.
What we (those of us who are sane enough to honestly want a cleaner planet) ought to do now is prepare the world for what's to come. For example, Australia has recently adjusted their entire economic system to deal with the changes. In the 80s, Australia was the biggest exporter of grain. They now have no export at all. Their people have finally realized that the 2 decades long drought they've been having is no drought at all but actually climate change in action. You see, drought ends. If you have a period of decreased precipitation that lasts forever, it's not a drought. It's climate change.
We could petition the government to start allowing more farmland to be used rather than subsidized so farmers wouldn't use them. Our current grain reserve only lasts us about 55 days or so, which I think is a disgrace. Being the richest nation in the world with the most resources readily available, we should worry less about food prices dropping and more about stocking up for emergencies. Even the primitives of the ancient world knew better better than to have only 55 days or so worth of emergency stock of grain. Harvests fail every once in a while, and we need to make sure we have enough reserves not just for ourselves but for as many people outside our country as we can feed.
Actually, I think it is a disgrace that we have evolved into an economic system where we would rather see people starve than see food prices drop. Each year the US government literally pays farmers not to use all their farmlands in order to keep food prices up. As a result, we only have enough grain reserve to last us a couple months. This is a disgrace. This is an outrage. This is a shame.
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