climate change?

[billy]

what happened to it, for some reason it hasn't really been in the news for a few years. does this mean apathy reins or does it indicate that it was all rhetoric?

[srijantje]

big industry counter offensive if you ask me,+bad economy,can't afford to do anything about it,it's there though,just read an article [in dutch]about the alarming rate of ice melt in the antarctic

[Leanne]

Whether it's real or not real, man's fault or natural, I think the biggest problem with the whole thing is that people aren't all stupid -- we could see the big corporations immediately seizing on climate change to make millions off us with their "environmentally friendly" bullshit, and that just triggered the cynic response. It's a damn shame, since there are plenty of things we can and should do to reduce our impact on the world (whether we can stop climate change is irrelevant at this point, we shouldn't be doing our best to accelerate the process). It's a million different kinds of wrong to take financial advantage of people's desire to make a positive difference.

(Which is why I don't donate to World Vision, but that's a whole other story)

[billy]

i get a feeling that media feels it's old hat so stay as far away as possible from it. i have noticed more alternative energy plants and electric cars etc, also some attempts to use less fossil fuel. it's just not discussed as a subject any more. can we stop it, i doubt it, i do think if we set our best minds on it we can make a difference.

[Leanne]

The Australian government has just introduced the world's largest carbon tax -- the spin doctors tell us that it's incentive for big business to reduce their carbon footprint, but there wouldn't be a person in the country who doesn't know it's nothing but revenue raising. It's hard to care when politicians and corporations alike treat us like moronic cash machines.

[billy]

a few countries have a similar thing though maybe not as big scale.
i'd be happy with such acts if they used the foot print sin tax on alternative energy etc.
but that's asking too much.
such companies should be forced to work within acceptable guidelines re the climate or shut down,, they could use the footprint tax to re tool.

[Leanne]

i'd be happy with such acts if they used the foot print sin tax on alternative energy etc.
but that's asking too much.

Exactly -- if we could see that money put into projects that genuinely benefit the environment, I would have absolutely no issue with it. But we know that it's really just a way for the government to claim a budget surplus and fund their own retirement.

[srijantje]

amen to that

[Leanne]

If I was running the world (watch this space, it could happen soon) I'd make it law that any product marketed as "environmentally friendly" MUST contribute a substantial percentage of its profits to properly researched community projects to alleviate the effects of climate change.

If that means that ten cents in every dollar goes to lifting the Pacific Islands ten metres out of the water, so be it

[billy]

i think that would be fair, things that were actually envionmentally friendly wouldn't need to spell it out so would be exempt for said tax, things like solar panel manufacturers, wind turbines and electric cars etc.
it would be a good idea that point 1 percent of tax from an area goes back into that area in the form of community projects aimed at a better environment.

there's lots of ways when you think about it but govs just want to balance books and make as much as they can. for some reason it's okay to spend tax on shite projects but not on great ones.

[srijantje]

it's all about collaboration between government and big business

[addy]

I think SJ hit it on the head though... most governments are more focused on rehabilitating the economy rather than trying to renovate industries. China, which is not-so-newly industrialized and is flying pretty high right now, doesn't seem particularly interested in green initiatives. The discussion just kind of fell by the wayside, I guess?

[billy]

so basically the world is apathetic? i suppose that's to be expected, we also seem apathetic about most things that could improve our lives. or is that just me being a cynic?

[srijantje]

it's not so much apathetic,although most people are,but not being organised,if you have big industry,government[arrmy,police,etc.]against you,there is not much chance for the change for the better

[Leanne]

I don't know about apathy... it's just hard to care about trees when you're trying to feed your family.

[addy]

Just watched an interesting documentary called "Who Killed the Electric Car", about the Eve1 and all those electric car models they rolled out in California some years back and subsequently killed. It wasn't perfect, but it was a sensible option -- decent mileage, cost the same to run as a gas car with none of the smoke, didn't run on a combustion engine so didn't break down as much and was easier to fix (a fact car companies hated since repair jobs were a huge part of their business). Bottom line, political will (and a lot of collective will from constituents) is needed to make stuff like this happen, and sadly we haven't been pushed far enough to the edge to admit to ourselves that something must be done, whatever it takes.

[Erthona]

Follow the money!

[srijantje]

absolutely,follow the money

[billy]

if everyone stopped buying cars for just 1 year and stated they wanted electric ones instead and would continue the boycott. 12 months later we'd have a slew of electric powered cars. at the end of the day leanne's right, it's hard to care when you have to feed a family. but shouldn't we be in charge of what direction we want to go, why are we always sheep?

[srijantje]

an interesting read

The New York Times Game Over for the Climate By JAMES HANSEN Published: May 9, 2012
GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”

If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.

Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.

That is the long-term outlook. But near-term, things will be bad enough. Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels.

If this sounds apocalyptic, it is. This is why we need to reduce emissions dramatically. President Obama has the power not only to deny tar sands oil additional access to Gulf Coast refining, which Canada desires in part for export markets, but also to encourage economic incentives to leave tar sands and other dirty fuels in the ground.

The global warming signal is now louder than the noise of random weather, as I predicted would happen by now in the journal Science in 1981. Extremely hot summers have increased noticeably. We can say with high confidence that the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural events — they were caused by human-induced climate change.

We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life. But add too much, as we are doing now, and temperatures will inevitably rise too high. This is not the result of natural variability, as some argue. The earth is currently in the part of its long-term orbit cycle where temperatures would normally be cooling. But they are rising — and it’s because we are forcing them higher with fossil fuel emissions.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 280 parts per million to 393 p.p.m. over the last 150 years. The tar sands contain enough carbon — 240 gigatons — to add 120 p.p.m. Tar shale, a close cousin of tar sands found mainly in the United States, contains at least an additional 300 gigatons of carbon. If we turn to these dirtiest of fuels, instead of finding ways to phase out our addiction to fossil fuels, there is no hope of keeping carbon concentrations below 500 p.p.m. — a level that would, as earth’s history shows, leave our children a climate system that is out of their control.

We need to start reducing emissions significantly, not create new ways to increase them. We should impose a gradually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, then distribute 100 percent of the collections to all Americans on a per-capita basis every month. The government would not get a penny. This market-based approach would stimulate innovation, jobs and economic growth, avoid enlarging government or having it pick winners or losers. Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices. Not only that, the reduction in oil use resulting from the carbon price would be nearly six times as great as the oil supply from the proposed pipeline from Canada, rendering the pipeline superfluous, according to economic models driven by a slowly rising carbon price.

But instead of placing a rising fee on carbon emissions to make fossil fuels pay their true costs, leveling the energy playing field, the world’s governments are forcing the public to subsidize fossil fuels with hundreds of billions of dollars per year. This encourages a frantic stampede to extract every fossil fuel through mountaintop removal, longwall mining, hydraulic fracturing, tar sands and tar shale extraction, and deep ocean and Arctic drilling.

President Obama speaks of a “planet in peril,” but he does not provide the leadership needed to change the world’s course. Our leaders must speak candidly to the public — which yearns for open, honest discussion — explaining that our continued technological leadership and economic well-being demand a reasoned change of our energy course. History has shown that the American public can rise to the challenge, but leadership is essential.

The science of the situation is clear — it’s time for the politics to follow. This is a plan that can unify conservatives and liberals, environmentalists and business. Every major national science academy in the world has reported that global warming is real, caused mostly by humans, and requires urgent action. The cost of acting goes far higher the longer we wait — we can’t wait any longer to avoid the worst and be judged immoral by coming generations.

James Hansen directs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and is the author of “Storms of My Grandchildren.”