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Climate change - What do we do?

With climate change becoming a more and more urgent problem, many solutions are being tried or suggested but there are political, economic and scientific issues with all of them. These ideas and how to implement them will be the most important decisions of the next decades.

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Permalink Reply by Joan Denoo on April 21, 2012 at 1:28pm

As long as we had cheap fuel for our cars and industry, cheap electrical power for homes and businesses and industry, and cheap religion to tell us there was a better life ahead, people attempted to conserve the status quo. With energy problems, constant warring and draining our human and material resources, we begin to doubt, look elsewhere, and find there are other sources of energy than petroleum, coal, and firewood, that living with the realization that no evidence of god can be demonstrated, and discovering guidance, wisdom, ethics, morals, meaning and purpose within our selves, we no longer have the mind bindings.

Permalink Reply by Dogly on April 21, 2012 at 2:24pm

Go vegan. Few of us can make our own, less polluting, fuel. We can vote for sounder energy policies. We can live more lightly on the land.

Permalink Reply by Sean Murphy on April 21, 2012 at 7:39pm

I've been adapting my physiology to maintain comfort in a hotter environment. Adapt or die - soon to become a Natural Law again...

Permalink Reply by Alice on April 21, 2012 at 8:44pm

always has been :)

Permalink Reply by Alice on April 21, 2012 at 8:45pm

what do you think of the claim that Europe will go into ice age within 10 years if ice keeps melting in Greenland?

Permalink Reply by Joan Denoo on April 21, 2012 at 9:48pm

Oh Gee! I don't have any idea. I took all the geology I could get in college and the only thing I know for sure is the earth changes, extinctions occur, life returns in new and different forms, with interesting varieties and many of these are now going extinct. The test is, can you and I and our civilization adapt? If yes, then who know what possibilities will become of the human species. If no, then the earth will go on without homo sapiens, maybe without water, and maybe will out life, and one day the sun will burn earth to a crisp and who will know, who will care, who will grieve the losses.

No one! My daughter's sweet little banty hen that gave them an egg a day and roamed along beside the cats and dogs was nothing but scattered feathers, probably done in by a raccoon. We all cried; if we had not been there, would any living thing have cried?

Permalink Reply by Dogly on April 22, 2012 at 10:27am

Yes, the earth will one day burn to a crisp. In the meantime, humans can either shorten or extend the remaining time that the earth can sustain us. Can our civilization adapt? I think we can. But, only if humans can use self restraint. Only if we willingly refrain from the excessively destructive practices that are wrecking the joint. Only if we are willing to share our own, human, portion of the fruits of the earth fairly among ourselves.

Permalink Reply by Joan Denoo on April 22, 2012 at 1:32pm

I have been watching tapes of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL78CEFF9129DEA2B3

The highlights of INET's "Paradigm Lost: Rethinking Economics and P...

"Best of Berlin" where they explore different aspects of economic and political thought. There are a few participants and presenters who are of the Classical, Neo-classical, Liberal, and Neo-Liberal schools of economic and political thought and they fight fiercely to defend the capitalist system, even with its Boom-and-Bust nature. The intent of the conference is to move beyond these models and find ways to include labor in its paradigm. There are three days of conference tapes and I find them fascinating.

Very few women and people of color. The planners and organizers have been firmly and harshly held accountable for that foolish error. The women who are presenting do an excellent job, on the most part. But a few duds are to be expected of humans, even women.

Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on April 21, 2012 at 11:30pm

I haven't heard that. Got a link?

Permalink Reply by Jessica Berman on April 21, 2012 at 11:33pm

That is a possibility if the melting of all that freshwater into the ocean stopped the Gulf Stream, but currently that's a remote possibility by current understanding of the currents. If the Gulf Stream didn't flow towards Europe the weather there would be much colder.
Understanding all the variables in such patterns is very difficult, which is one reason geo-engineering solutions need science, not just technology.

Permalink Reply by Joan Denoo on April 21, 2012 at 11:11pm

"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?",

~Keynes

I will require solid evidence and/or convincing argument rather than rhetoric.

Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on April 21, 2012 at 11:40pm

The public is only beginning to wake up to the reality of Climate Destabilization. I loathe the let the 99% sacrifice approach, and it won't work. Even if ordinary folks turn down the thermostat, use led lights instead of incandescents and cut car trips to the minimum, as long as business has no incentive to stop their massively wasteful nongreen ways, we won't turn anything around.

I think the Occupy Movement has to integrate sustainability into its mission; to force vested finance, military, political, and businesses to live with fair rules rewarding green standards. As long as waste is more profitable in the short term, these interests will throw away the future. If the people of the world rise up and redesign corporations and trade to operate constructively in the real world, instead of outsourcing their waste and risk for free, then future generations might have a chance.