Monday, May 07, 2007

A conservative twist, leaving you with a bad taste in your mouth.

Ok, now that it is finally proven beyond any doubt that global warming is happening, and that human activity plays a huge role in it, what does the climate change doubters do? They continue to play the game of it being a hoax by liberals and saying that it is a scheme by them to destroy the US economy and with it millions of jobs based on pseudoscience. What are these ultra conservatives thinking? Why on earth would any sensible person, not to mention thousands of world respected scientists, risk their reputations and all their good will to purposefully destroy the US economy? Well, give me a good explanation and I will give it a second thought.

Besides, if we look at it carefully, the changes society has to make can be a boon to the economy and not a set back. If we spent the same amount on renewable energy, raw material savings technology, innovations in engine and clean air technology, funding for nature restoration projects, etc. etc. that we do on the oil industry and large energy companies, the US and much of the rest of the world would be on a road of renewed economic growth and vitality. And this road would be a sustainable path, not one of destruction. The only problem is that the loosers would be the big oil corporations and big-energy, and those are the traditional allies of Bush and his cronies and pull far too much political weight through their heavily financed lobbies.

Furthermore, it does not have to cost a fortune to stop global climate change, if we act now. Think Progress recently published an article titled New Climate Change Report Debunks Key Right-Wing Talking Point On Global Warming which outlines briefly the arguments by the far right in the US and how easily these arguments can be overcome.

DeSmogBlog has run a calculation of what is truly needed and concluded that US$ 10 per person is all that it takes! "The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded today that it would cost 0.12% of the world's domestic product to substantially reduce our collective greenhouse gas emissions. GDP of the world economy: US$60 trillion.12% of $60 trillion: $70 billion. Total population of the earth: 6.5 billionCost per person to significantly reduce heat-trapping gas worldwide: $10 a year. Cost of saving the planet from droughts, famine, mass flooding, species extinction and rising sea levels: priceless."

As can be seen the issue of stopping global warming is straight forward, except that we must recognize the fact that the developed nations has a much larger responsibility and thus must be expected to pay a larger % per head of total costs.

US and Australia are now the the only two countries left in the world where there are a few handful of ultra conservatives that denies the facts of science. Sarcozy, the right wing candidate who just won the presidential election in France said that he was friendly towards Bush and would like to work with him, as long as he did not hinder the work to stop global warming. Conservatives elsewhere in the world are waking up, albeit late, but not Bush and Howard. Well, it is ironic that the US has been hit for several years by strange and unsettling weather patterns, and Australia is undergoing its worst and longest drought ever, but climate change? no way! What these countries' leaders try to make you think is that it is just business as usual, nothing strange is happening with the weather, just your usual natural phenomena. Well, they will not be sitting for much longer as leaders, which is a comfort, but will it be too late as people like them have already hampered effective climate change policies, not to speak of the damage caused through lack of leadership on these vital issues, but history always has its own judgement.

1 comment:

Nepali Akash said...

Trond, it makes a lot of sense.

But I sense that there is a serious propaganda campaign going on from the Rights and the oil lobbies. There are reports floating in the Internet possibly funded by the energy giants and makes a mockery of the concept of global warming and debunks it. And this is dangerous.