Danny ChaiYou know, my blog makes it seem like I’m obsessed with global warming, but I’m really not; I just seem to come across that topic in my reading a lot. Like, just this morning, two of the comics in the Merc referenced global warming. Anyway, since I do have some thoughts on it, let me take a few posts to just get it out of my system.
As I’ve said, I’m pretty convinced based on the evidence that human activity contributes to global warming. But here’s the thing – I don’t think think we can realistically do anything to stop it. So we should get used to the idea of it happening and figure out how we’re going to deal with it, because we can’t avoid it.
Robert Samuelson and Fareed Zakaria wrote a couple columns about this in Newsweek a while back, and I wholeheartedly agree with them, especially Zakaria. But the crux of the problem is this – the vast majority of our energy comes from fossil fuels, and there is no viable alternative energy source that can come close to replacing that, even under the most optimistic of scenarios. Even super-liberal The West Wing said as much in an episode where they discussed alternative fuel sources. We will be using fossil fuels for the majority of our energy for the foreseeable future, unless there’s some revolutionary energy technology breakthrough, but that’s what it’s going to take.
The even bigger problem is that the majority of the increase in world fossil fuel usage in the future will come from developing countries. Paul Krugman wrote a column a few weeks ago how California’s energy policies can be a model for how the country can reduce its carbon emissions. But it ignored the problem of the developing world. Even under the Kyoto Protocol, world fossil fuel usage would (will) continue to explode in the future, because developing nations are exempt.
And while I disagree with the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance’s default skepticism on the evidence of global warming, I do agree with their stance that you have to measure the cost of whatever initiatives you take. And we cannot morally tell developing nations that they can’t increase their energy usage (in large part with fossil fuels, since there’s no real alternative) to spur their development, when their energy consumption is just a fraction of ours, and when doing so would condemn them to perpetual poverty.
In short, I believe that human activity does contribute to global warming, but that we need to be honest about how much we can stop it. It’s not an excuse to rape the earth, and we need do what we can, but we also need to realize that we’re not going to be able to realistically stop global warming, so we also need to think about humane ways to deal with that. No viable large scale alternatives to fossil fuels exist, and the majority of the increase in fossil fuel usage is going to come from developing nations. Therefore, we’re going to keep on using more and more fossil fuels and keep warming the globe until we run out, societies collapse, we enter global war, and Jesus comes back. Have a nice day.