Sunspots, man made, sunspots, man made, believe it is ‘true’, believe it is not ‘true’, etc, gosh and this level of discussion helps us how?
For years humanity has been flummoxed by its own lack of ability to – once and for all – figure out what is happening with climate change. It is heating up, it is cooling down, it is in the sunspots stupid, it is man made idiot, it is caused by changes in the Golf Stream [cooling message for Northern Europe] and others etc.
About 30+ years the High School Certificate equivalents around the world have had versions of this question. I had one for mine in the early 80s. At that time it was about greenhouse gases.
What I cannot quite figure out is why do we argue about it? We know that if we do not act in favor of what ever we can do to improve our livability systems, then we’re for sure having a negative impact, even if just on the air we breathe, the amount of rubbish we have to deal with, the cost of transporting endangered liquid like water or the amount of fish available in the oceans. I know these are matters, which are caused by other things besides the climate change but the results are on the same side of the equation.
Err on the side of action for improved air [if nothing more], when politics, science and human skepticism cannot come to an agreement. A classic flame war! Not a great one to bargain with and too big to solve it by us all spending hours in weeding our veggie gardens. Wouldn’t it be nice though if the politics around this matter got real. I do not hear a lot of serious conversation in Oz about this, meaning open transparent involved conversation, not just politicians. It seems that in Finland people are seriously discussing what and how they could cut from their consumption, perhaps that summer cottage, which does not get used?
I just don’t think the solution is retrograde. What I mean by that is a solution, which looks backwards and seeks some rosy image of yesteryear. We live in a different context now, there are more people, our cities look different. A solution is needed, which consists of the best of the better parts available and builds towards a good life. A fabulous unintended consequence might be that we get happier not chasing stuff 🙂 and another one would be that we become more effective and healthy in how we feed ourselves….. but how will our economies cope? Well that’s just it, the biggie, it needs a change too if we are to be real about the solutions, change in the values and change in the realities of what and how we sell/buy.
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