Dont worry, those who think that global warming is happening and those who dont should have the same plan of action: do nothing. See The Limits to Growth.
Maybe this is so. But Industrial growth is like a train, nothing can be done to stop it. It can be derailed but that is to the peril of everyone. I view food shortage and energy shortage as problems to be solved by engineering solutions rather than political action against industry
In some ways this is what the World3 model and the analyses of peak oil are telling us, growth is like a train, we would need to act 20 or 30 years ahead of events to prevent them from happening. We cannot be sure of our predictions and politicians are elected for 4 or five years so acting now to avert an uncertain future is impossible. This means that "business as usual" is the only practical way forward. Perhaps after a century or two of global systems modelling we may be able to intervene ahead of events, perhaps with engineering solutions but for the moment the best we can do is fix what happens, preferably at the local level. I am against global geoengineering or even global intervention, certainly until we have accurate global systems models and even then I am horrified at the idea of making the whole world overcast, like a scene from Blade Runner.
Dont worry, those who think that global warming is happening and those who dont should have the same plan of action: do nothing. See The Limits to Growth.
ReplyDeleteMaybe this is so. But Industrial growth is like a train, nothing can be done to stop it. It can be derailed but that is to the peril of everyone. I view food shortage and energy shortage as problems to be solved by engineering solutions rather than political action against industry
DeleteIn some ways this is what the World3 model and the analyses of peak oil are telling us, growth is like a train, we would need to act 20 or 30 years ahead of events to prevent them from happening. We cannot be sure of our predictions and politicians are elected for 4 or five years so acting now to avert an uncertain future is impossible. This means that "business as usual" is the only practical way forward. Perhaps after a century or two of global systems modelling we may be able to intervene ahead of events, perhaps with engineering solutions but for the moment the best we can do is fix what happens, preferably at the local level. I am against global geoengineering or even global intervention, certainly until we have accurate global systems models and even then I am horrified at the idea of making the whole world overcast, like a scene from Blade Runner.
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