Re:How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
by rm_-rf_slash on Friday May 20, 2016 @11:35AM
(#11738652)
Reminds me of a comic I see floated around Facebook from time to time of an auditorium of scientists seated beneath a banner reading "Climate Change Conference," and someone raises their hand and says something to the effect of "But what if we're wrong about climate change and we make a better world for nothing?"
What happens if we spend hundreds of billions of dollars on reducing CO2 emissions and it turns out it was all for naught?
That money has to come from somewhere. It could be spent on healthcare, getting people clean water, etc.
To me that would be a tragedy.
The reduced pollution would probably reduce at least some of the health care costs. Plus we spend way too much on wars and killing people ("defense"). Use some of that money first.
Yes. It would be tragic to cut out polluting forms of energy production that destroy rivers and lives.
That's not first and foremost CO2, though. Many other forms of pollution tend to be far worse to local environment. Addressing those might involve things like catalytic converters on ships and the like.
1) Potential: If climate change is significantly affected by human output, then we may curb or counter the current climate trends.
2) Actual: Healthier environment for life on this planet. We won't have cities like Los Angeles used to be, or Beijing is now where people can barely go outside without taking a year off their life. This is, without a doubt, a good thing unless you explicitly want poorer health to be the norm.