The End is Nigh

So apparently, not only is catastrophic climate change coming sooner, it’s going to be even worse than we thought as well. And this is coming from a “conservative” paper on the subject:

The really chilling thing about the IPCC report is that it is the work of several thousand climate experts who have widely differing views about how greenhouse gases will have their effect. Some think they will have a major impact, others a lesser role. Each paragraph of this report was therefore argued over and scrutinised intensely. Only points that were considered indisputable survived this process. This is a very conservative document – that’s what makes it so scary,’ said one senior UK climate expert.

When I read these sorts of things 2 thoughts occur to me: 1) I want to curl up in a little ball on my bed and hide until its all over 2) I want the power to force change upon the population.

It’s these sort of reports that make me think that what it’s going to take to get Canada or the US to make the monstrous amount of painful changes is for someone to be elected with a majority government (or control of Senate & Congress), and then be willing to ram through insanely unpopular legislation to meet emission-reduction targets, and fines for polluters, and raise taxes for polluting goods, etc. Essentially, be willing to be a one-term ruler in order to get these things done. Because I think 4 years of activ(e/ist) legislation could do a lot. But you’d need control, and you’d need to realize that you’re probably NOT going to get re-elected, because virtually every industry lobby will be working against you.

4 Replies to “The End is Nigh”

  1. There’s only so much that you can do when the entire populace is against you. It could work if you had the full support of your entire party because otherwise you’d have a backbencher revolt (it would be pretty useless to have a party whip if everyone knew that they’d all be voted out next election anyways).
    But also- the next government would just reverse everything and if companies figured that this would happen they’d just delay any changes figuring that they could get away with it.

    We need to change the norms of society so that people expect and desire change on a grand scale. I think that this is happening and that we’re getting close to a critical mass. Will it be enough? Well… I have serious doubts that even if all of society started to change things right now that we could actually do anything. People want to fly on planes and live in suburbs and have plastic toys- we have absolutly zero substitutes for any of these. A Hydrogen economy? Where are we going to get the energy to produce all this hydrogen?
    Need to change the norms.

  2. There’s only so much that you can do when the entire populace is against you. It could work if you had the full support of your entire party because otherwise you’d have a backbencher revolt (it would be pretty useless to have a party whip if everyone knew that they’d all be voted out next election anyways).
    But also- the next government would just reverse everything and if companies figured that this would happen they’d just delay any changes figuring that they could get away with it.

    We need to change the norms of society so that people expect and desire change on a grand scale. I think that this is happening and that we’re getting close to a critical mass. Will it be enough? Well… I have serious doubts that even if all of society started to change things right now that we could actually do anything. People want to fly on planes and live in suburbs and have plastic toys- we have absolutly zero substitutes for any of these. A Hydrogen economy? Where are we going to get the energy to produce all this hydrogen?
    Need to change the norms.

  3. Wow…that’s really scary. I’m like you, I want to curl up in a ball but that probably wouldn’t help the matter any! I’ve passed this article along to a handful of people. The only problem is most of them are in the South and they think global warming is the figment of someone’s imagination. Maybe the article will help get them informed or maybe it will just scare the shit out of them and then they’ll get amnesia and forget all about it.

  4. Wow…that’s really scary. I’m like you, I want to curl up in a ball but that probably wouldn’t help the matter any! I’ve passed this article along to a handful of people. The only problem is most of them are in the South and they think global warming is the figment of someone’s imagination. Maybe the article will help get them informed or maybe it will just scare the shit out of them and then they’ll get amnesia and forget all about it.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: