Climate Change? Nahhh ...

Oh please. Somebody compares Greta’s essay to the mendacious argument of “taxation is theft,” it only follows that, logically, that same person might think there’s something mendacious about “every inch of our lives.”

Again, I concede I’m too pedantic. At this point, I’m the joke of this thread, and I accept that.

 

Lotta white, (likely) straight, (likely) cis men in that pic.

 

No one likes pedantry. Why be that person?

 

What Does Sustainable Living Look Like? Maybe Like Uruguay

The task of shrinking our societal footprint is the most urgent problem of our era — and perhaps the most intractable. For most experts, the first steps are obvious and yield the largest and least invasive cuts. Since electricity makes up about 25 percent of the United States’ five billion or so tons of yearly emissions, it more than likely begins with decarbonizing the grid. Next comes a push to electrify the transportation sector and regulate industrial production; each contributes about 27 and 24 percent of emissions, respectively. Then come several smaller cuts, to the buildings we live in and the appliances we use, from policies already having success in Europe and Canada: replacing gas-burning furnaces with electric heat pumps, updating building efficiencies and banning air-conditioners and fridges that use hydrofluorocarbon. Exactly how much all these cuts reduce our footprints is difficult to say, because our country spans an entire continent with several climates. But modeling by Energy Innovation suggests that, even after enacting dozens of subsidies, new efficiency standards and introducing new technologies, by 2050, it might only reduce our emissions by half.


This is the problem with any climate policy, big or small: It requires an imaginative leap. While the math of decarbonization and electric mobilization is clear, the future lifestyle it implies isn’t always.

Right-wing commenters sometimes seize upon this fact to caricature any climate policy as a forced retreat from modernity — Americans forced to live in ecopods — while on the left any accounting seems to cloud the urgency of the moment.

 

Not a joke, certainly.

But the drumbeat of "it's a religion"- an overstatement meant to criticize another overstatement - makes it hard to take your points altogether seriously.

 

The essay that you posted has all the markings of religion. The phrase “saving the world” is even in it. But I concede it again, as I have before, that I may have a broader view of religion than you do. I think everyone – even atheists - worship something. I don’t think that human beings just opt out of worship with a heightened sense of enlightenment about the world.

 

I tried.

 

That's all we can ask of anyone.

 

There are too many decent people on this thread for the "at loggerheads" verdict to be in play. So let's just gather 'round the fire and plot out our next boxer shorts swap meet.

 

Do, or do not. There is no "try."