Re:My Semester with the Snowflakes
by gfodor on Saturday December 28, 2019 @02:04AM
(#21897600)
Global warming will be fixed easily if/when people stop thinking the solution is to drag humanity backwards, instead of pushing humanity forwards.
To think that we've somehow reached the peak of our ability to safely consume energy and resources when we haven't even left our home planet is an extremely short sighted perspective. In 1000 years our ancestors will laugh at those who thought that somehow, after thousands of years of advancement, humanity had found its insurmountable wall to more growth and consumption of the universes' infinite resources in the humble year of 2019 due to a mis-calculation regarding the carbon emissions due to the parochial method used at the time for generating power. It's patently absurd if you take a longer perspective. If we don't survive 1000 years, it surely will not be due to our collective failure to solve this problem.
The more people continue to think that if we just convince people to give up their modern lifestyle we'll solve the problem, the longer the problem will persist.
Instead, we should be striving not to solve global warming as a first order concern, but develop technologies that will radically improve the lives of all people, and solve global warming as one of their side effects.
To think that we've somehow reached the peak of our ability to safely consume energy and resources when we haven't even left our home planet is an extremely short sighted perspective. In 1000 years our ancestors will laugh at those who thought that somehow, after thousands of years of advancement, humanity had found its insurmountable wall to more growth and consumption of the universes' infinite resources in the humble year of 2019 due to a mis-calculation regarding the carbon emissions due to the parochial method used at the time for generating power. It's patently absurd if you take a longer perspective. If we don't survive 1000 years, it surely will not be due to our collective failure to solve this problem.
The more people continue to think that if we just convince people to give up their modern lifestyle we'll solve the problem, the longer the problem will persist.
Instead, we should be striving not to solve global warming as a first order concern, but develop technologies that will radically improve the lives of all people, and solve global warming as one of their side effects.