Thanos Thanos:
DrCaleb DrCaleb:
The choices will be hard, and they didn't have to be if the Boomers had taken any sort of action decades ago.
Actually for decades the economies and infrastructures of the West have been improving radically in terms of cleanliness. Wildly improved fuel economy & emissions standards on vehicles. Changing home heating from coal & oil to natural gas & electric. Huge percentages of the electrical grid being powered by nuclear & natural gas instead of coal. Watersheds recovering as the old toxic industries of the Rust Belt disappeared. It's only idiots like Donald Trump who see these things as negatives because they're peddling a fantasy of how awesome everything was back in the 1950's when no one cared about the filth that was being created.
While we have been improving our environmental impact, it wasn't by choice. Environmental monitoring agencies that were branches of government are a relatively new thing, and nothing would have changed without their creation.
But our thirst for gasoline is driven by our superstition that SUVs and pickups are safer than cars. So much so, that Trucks now come with 4 cylinder engines, and North American car companies are halting car production in North America because the profit margin is too small. We might be environmentally cleaner, but our impact on the climate is increasing.
Thanos Thanos:
What's driven the increase in CO2 emissions is the development of the former Third World, especially in China and India where their environmental standards are minimal to non-existent. Shutting down coal-generated electricity in the West is essentially negated if every coal-fuel power plant in North America that gets shuttered is replaced on the other side of the plant by a dozen new coal-fuelled facilities. How this factor is supposed to be halted is beyond me because it's not like it's going to be acceptable to the people in places that have always been poor that they have to stay poor in order to satisfy the environmental agenda of elitist (and usually wealthy) liberal Westerners who've never had a single tough day in their entire lives.
The deniers use this an excuse why we shouldn't have to do anything. "But, we aren't the biggest emitter!" Trouble is, if you measure historical emissions, we are the top, by far. Then there are all the plastic filled gyres in the oceans and seas. . .
The death of coal is for certain a major accomplishment, but that is just a small slice of our emissions. The fact that renewable energy is a growth industry is a first step, but just like we conquered acid rain and ozone depletion through regulation, we need similar regulations to ensure a fair field in reducing carbon emissions as well. But the deniers don't want anyone to be the first to try it.
China too has halted coal plants from coming on line, and has approved more nuclear plants than everywhere else in the world. There has been exactly one new nuclear plant brought on stream in North America since the 1970s.
This is such a big problem, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have been pouring money into the development of a fail-proof nuclear design to be implemented world wide.
Thanos Thanos:
Going after the Western economies that are always in a constant state of clean-up and improved efficiency is an easy thing to do. Going after the other ones is much harder, which is why the radicals won't talk about China or India. Or go against something like Arab oil, not when there are simpler targets like the Alberta oilsands for them to white-knight against.
Many of those economies are seeing the offloading of our emissions on them, because our manufacturing has also been offloaded. Now what we need is reduced consumption of the products causing the emissions. That is the best thing we can do to help out.
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