freedom's just another word.....
If you have been following my somewhat erratic posts, and the comments that they have attracted, you might agree that this particular page is filled with forebodings of gloom and doom.
You're right.
So what?
The Supreme Court ruled today that those gases collectively called 'greenhouse gases' are in fact pollutants and therefore can be regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency. The 5-4 vote has been called a "rebuke" and an "environmental blow" to the Bush administration.
Big deal. I don't discount the significance of this decision a bit, in a philosophical or procedural sense, but I think that, most likely, not enough good will come of it. This is no more an indictment of the present administration than any of the preceeding ones, this is a problem of military complexity, that has seen only a casual response from most parties concerned.
I take our environment as seriously as the next guy, (I guess that is nothing to brag about), but I have the ugly suspicion that we have already passed the point of no return where the environment is concerned, so, I ask you, the readers, to post your idea or ideas of what the world will be like in fifty or one hundred years.
Need a little help?
Here are a couple of points to ponder:
First: the worlds oceanic ecosystem (defined as both plant and animal life), will be depleted in approximately forty years.
Second: the trend known as global warming has already reached a tipping point, and the climactic conditions that prevail across the planet in 70 to 100 years will differ radically from what we have today. Lands generally north of 45 degrees latitude in the northern hemisphere, (or south of that latitude in the southern), will become the most desirable for agriculture. Lands that are now perpetually frozen will become arable, lands now considered as prime for agriculture will become, in many instances, deserts.
There notions are of course, theories, that may or may not play out. But it is pretty clear to me that the world we live in will change radically over the next few decades. Those things that we take for granted may simply go away. The term terrorism may apply not to senseless acts of random violence, but to acts such as stealing produce from a garden. Energy crisis may not reflect so much on high priced gasoline, but being able to start, and maintain a fire to cook on. If the food chain is severely disrupted, we may all become vegan's in the foreseeable future.
Pine bark salad anyone?
The point that I am trying to make here is that all the institutions in our lives are going to be subject to great changes. It is possible that the term government will lose meaning as life takes on an "every man for himself" tone. Religion may too face the need to adapt or simply go away, (although I tend to doubt the latter assertion).
At this point, having driven you to boredom or sleep, I invite the readers to take a shot at these notions, on as broad or narrow a view as you like. Don't hold back, make a projection for 5 decades into the future.
Whaddaya got to lose?
You're right.
So what?
The Supreme Court ruled today that those gases collectively called 'greenhouse gases' are in fact pollutants and therefore can be regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency. The 5-4 vote has been called a "rebuke" and an "environmental blow" to the Bush administration.
Big deal. I don't discount the significance of this decision a bit, in a philosophical or procedural sense, but I think that, most likely, not enough good will come of it. This is no more an indictment of the present administration than any of the preceeding ones, this is a problem of military complexity, that has seen only a casual response from most parties concerned.
I take our environment as seriously as the next guy, (I guess that is nothing to brag about), but I have the ugly suspicion that we have already passed the point of no return where the environment is concerned, so, I ask you, the readers, to post your idea or ideas of what the world will be like in fifty or one hundred years.
Need a little help?
Here are a couple of points to ponder:
First: the worlds oceanic ecosystem (defined as both plant and animal life), will be depleted in approximately forty years.
Second: the trend known as global warming has already reached a tipping point, and the climactic conditions that prevail across the planet in 70 to 100 years will differ radically from what we have today. Lands generally north of 45 degrees latitude in the northern hemisphere, (or south of that latitude in the southern), will become the most desirable for agriculture. Lands that are now perpetually frozen will become arable, lands now considered as prime for agriculture will become, in many instances, deserts.
There notions are of course, theories, that may or may not play out. But it is pretty clear to me that the world we live in will change radically over the next few decades. Those things that we take for granted may simply go away. The term terrorism may apply not to senseless acts of random violence, but to acts such as stealing produce from a garden. Energy crisis may not reflect so much on high priced gasoline, but being able to start, and maintain a fire to cook on. If the food chain is severely disrupted, we may all become vegan's in the foreseeable future.
Pine bark salad anyone?
The point that I am trying to make here is that all the institutions in our lives are going to be subject to great changes. It is possible that the term government will lose meaning as life takes on an "every man for himself" tone. Religion may too face the need to adapt or simply go away, (although I tend to doubt the latter assertion).
At this point, having driven you to boredom or sleep, I invite the readers to take a shot at these notions, on as broad or narrow a view as you like. Don't hold back, make a projection for 5 decades into the future.
Whaddaya got to lose?
posted by eccentric recluse at 5:56 PM
12 Comments:
We're all gonna die.
Seriously, I think global climate change is going to continue, either faster or slower than it is now, and things it affects will change too fast for the government to keep up. See: New Orleans flood. We will be on our own, I believe. Maybe it will not become that bad for another hundred years, and maybe the climate will shift back, at least temporarily.
The hope is that things will go slowly enough that we can adapt without too much chaos.
You know why this global warming stuff never gets past the goofy posturing ? Do you know why the doom/gloomers can't get enough of a factual head of steam rolling to get anything done ?
Because, when you strip away the "data" used by those with an agenda.. and REALLY lay just facts on the table.. here's what you get:
Yes, there is a warming trend. And yes it can be quantified as slightly, human accelerated... by a whopping 0.7 degrees over the last 1/2 century. A worst case, we-do-nothing scenario would put the landscape/climate/desert-out-of-farmland/oceans-rising-by-a-WHOLE-6-inches... (are you ready for this?) ... Five-freekin' hundred years from now. And that's WORST case. It would likely be a millenium from now.. IF at all.. and IF we do nothing. And who's to say that wouldn't be an improvement ? It's certainly not an end of the world deal.
The atmoshpere is vast. We are insignificant. A single volcanic eruption dwarfs ALL industrial activity to date, when it comes to greenhouse gasses. If human activity "could" make much of a difference; just imagine how much CO2 that's not in the air from all those pre-human, continental forest fires that don't happen any more.
Worrying about how much we'll effect global temperature is like worrying that one man, peeing in a 1000 acre lake, would raise its temperature. You could measure it situationaly, and show it mathmatically, but it's of no concern.
(stating that the ocean's ecosytems will be depleted in 40 years is utter nonsense. We understand more about outerspace than we do the oceans. That's as goofy as the doomers who warned us that by now, we'd be in a man-made ice-age *eyes rolling* .. some 40 years ago)
anonymous, do you know what I like about you? it is that I always know just where you stand.
Like I mentioned, the two points that I mentioned are just theories, but the truth is, just because you have reason to disbelieve them does not make them completely false, nor does any margin of error in thier projections automatically validate your viewpoint.
Greenhouse gases from volcanoes? Well, I admit that I am not a volcanologist, the volcanic emissions that you note consist mainly of ash and pumice, with (previously) dissolved gases being a far distant second. Those gases, having been literally embedded in rock, (and in many cases still bonded to another element), tend to precipitate out of the atmosphere fairly quickly, and are then trapped in the soil, with whatever positive or negative effects that follow.
Now, to get back to the point here, can one assume that you believe that this is a non-problem requiring no action or solution?
My prediction for live on Earth in 50-100 years?
Shit.
Thank you.
I like that about you, too; that we know where you stand. Predictable, in a comforting way.
The volcanic, greenhouse gasses are little more complicated than you state, and of course not as simple as I pose either. Many elements and many reactions happen when unimaginable amounts of hotter-than-fire mass are belched into into the atmoshpere. My point was that just one "could" dwarf man's entire influence, and that they've happening since well before we learned to harness fossil fuels (long before we were around), continue to happen, and always will happen. Plus there are the omni-present, ocean-floor, constant volcanic emissions. My point, continued, is that what we do with oil and coal is relatively insignificant. Sure, there are localized circumstances where our activity is evident and toll-taking... Just like if you dumped 55 gallons of boiling water into a tide-pool, it would damage it significantly, but not in ANY way effect an ocean.
I'm all for conservation and common sense polution management. Honest.. I'm a tree-hugger and critter lover deluxe. NObody apprecites the natural wonder of this planet more than I. I just can't stand agenda-ed propoganda. Especially when the proposed solutions are patently, impossibly ubsurd and smell of "more governement, more taxes" (not to mention wonder-Gore's stake in it all).
The thing that really suffers is legitimate, realistic enviromentalism.
*spelling fatigue*
OK, I can accept that, but, again, as I said, (given that this is supposition), how would you advise a young adult today to orient his/her life for those changes that you do see on the horizon.
the first commenter (Roy) was right, we are all gonna die of something, and realistically, I don't believe that I will be around to see most of what is going to happen. but the point of this post was to postulate how our society will change....you can cite any circumstances that you like as a starting point.
wanna give it a try?
Yeah, I would.. kinda. My advice to young adults would be to keep yourself educated as opposed to brain-washed. Keep a grain-of-salt eye on those doom/gloomers who present horrific scenarios right along with "taxing" solutions.
Remember when recycling was on the brink of being mandated ? Under the "expert" administration of professional politicians; it was using more energy and was more environmentally damaging to gather, melt down and re-use aluminum; than it was to just mine and refine it. It was a ridiculous situation.
Do your best to lessen government's influence on technological solutions/advancements too (and lessen government in general). A few years ago, when the genius now sitting in the White House bragged about legislating a billion dollars to research hydrogen powered vehicles; I cringed. I can tell you with absolute certainty; if you give me; one thousand stacks of money; each containing a million dollars; I could, within three years, assemble a team of engineers; build the test facilities and produce a feasible prototype sedan.. AND work out the details for fuel distribution.
My point is (to you young adults); let the private sector sort this stuff out. Don't let it be political fodder.
In the mean time; by all means, please DO try to minimize your own, personal, environmental impact. It's not only personally rewarding (even fiscally); it's healthy and wise, too. Just please DO tune out and marginalize these agendized nuts.
As far as planning for the future environment ? Aside from the obvious; you really cannot. And you certainly can't force others to... any more than you can keep idiots from re-building in a flood plain. That's one of the built-in problems to freedom. Besides... even worst-case, these changes (man-caused or otherwise) will happen gradually enough for us to adapt. If for some reason they happen too quiclky ? The world is too big and too diverse to do anything about it, anyway.
It's gonna be several centuries before the planet is much different than it is now (environmentally, by our standards and by our influence).
When there's money to be made, capitalists rise to the occasion. This world was in a horse-buggy techno-world for hundreds of years. It's no coincidence that the rise from that, to a space shuttle, in ONE man's life-time, happened after this great country hit its techno-industrial-capitalistic stride.
Keep the faith...
What type of environmentalism could be more legitimate and realistic than to try to have zero impact on it? It's a huge unknown and people vastly more qualified to comment than ourselves but who don't read blogs argue about it all the time. I say err on the side of caution.
Besides, the carbon-dioxide component of the current pollution mix is significantly man-made, and those numbers are way out of line with what we think we know so far about "normal" global fluctuations. Scientists who know have almost quit arguing about that one. It seems to be the key point when talking about the danger of global warming.
Money was mentioned. W said right out that Kyoto was bad for the corporations, bad for the economy, and that is why we wouldn't participate. That's kind of scary, but so is W. The point here is that a lot of the rhetoric on both sides of this issue is "push-back" and therefore suspect to some degree, at least.
Anyway, just three points that stick up high enough for me to notice them.
"Realistic" & "zero impact" ?
"Realistic" & "zero impact" ?
I knew that was coming. :/
Not zero impact, but, you know, as zero as possible. Words like minimal, unobtrusive. Of course even a tribe of Indians two hundred years ago is going to cause a ripple in the environment; no one's blaming them for anything.
All I know is that business will only start doing the right thing environmentally when there's more money in doing right than in doing wrong.
Happy Easter.
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