By the time we finally departed I was already pissed off and so were the two hot Swedish chicks sitting right beside me. We waited for a whole freaking hour and got no apologies whatsoever. Okay fine, at least the driver kept the engine and air conditioning running as we sat still in the bus the whole time but so what? I was still mad.
Thing is, the girls and I were angry for two completely different reasons. While I was irritated about having to arrive at my destination late, the girls weren’t. In fact, they didn’t seem to mind at all. Guess what they rambled about?
“How can he put all that smoke in the air? He should have turned off the engine. Doesn’t he know anything about global warming?”
I burst out laughing.
Needless to say, they weren’t amused, so we talked. Long story short, they were fully on board the “man-made global warming is going to destroy us” bandwagon. It was also evident to them that I wasn’t.
That specific incident was my tipping point and I knew had to get deeper into this whole Al Gore induced phenomenon. I’ve never been the environmentally aware kind. Didn’t bother, didn’t care but with a growing number of people trying to get me to join the club, I tried to arrive at my own conclusions.
So, you’ve got “The Inconvenient Truth” Vs “The Great Swindle.” In other words, “Man is screwing up the climate” VS “it’s mostly just Mother Nature.” Or if you still want to rephrase it differently, “the Left” Vs “the Right.”
Now, I’m neither interested nor willing to invest time and effort delving into the many details involved . Not yet. Maybe never. What we should be focusing on are the fundamentals.
The fundamentals are easy to see if we just take a step back and zoom out. Why don’t we all just do that? The question of whether man-made global warming is myth or reality shouldn’t be focused on much because at the end of the day pollution is a fact. Deforestation is a fact. Oil spills are a fact. Given the exploding population of the planet, the immense importance of sustainable development is a fact. Claiming that ditching your huge ass SUV for a tiny Mini-Cooper instead results in fuel cost savings is a fact. Claiming that smokey buses cause climate change isn’t and receiving preachy lectures from two very self-righteous chicks about how turning off the bus’s engine helps the environment is downright annoying.
But that’s not all.
Frankly, the Al Gore type of evangelism makes me suspicious because it isn’t just about saving energy and all that stuff. Oh no. It’s also about extra taxes and increased government regulation, things I can’t happily swallow thanks to my libertarian leanings.
I’m all for solving problems if and when they exist but bigger government doesn’t really seem like a good answer to me. In this case, what would be better is methods like getting consumers to lobby corporations into becoming more socially responsible or else risk losing their market shares.
Basically, let the market forces settle it, but bigger government? Hmmm… no thanks.
Global warming or not, one thing is for sure. Going green has a good ROI. Now that I can certainly agree with. In fact, I like how Tim puts it. It’s so much better than what I had to endure from the two girls.
SudaneseThinker
SudaneseThinker
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m not a tree-hugger but I do believe that we are doing much more harm to the planet than before.
Try going to the rainforests of Borneo or Sumatra to catch a glimpse of what might unfold in the future.
the problem is:
say, it’s true that we’re fucking up the planet, then it’s not too late to do something positive about it.
say it’s not true that we’re fucking up the planet, then at least by doing something, we’ve become morally better persons as we do care about nature
I’m glad you laughed
A good summary appeared in “New Scientist” magazine:
Link
More articles here.
Danial, we are. Pollution is a fact. As for global warming, don’t know really.
Suzanne, good point.
DeTamble, I had no other choice really.
Don Cox, thanks for the links mate. Will check’em out.
Cheers everyone!
drima, i wish you warm wishes from israel where ill be staying temporarily
havent seen a sudanese refugee here yet, but as there must be some, i might as well bump into one
I understand what you’re saying about the environment snobs, but I’m not sure I agree with you that analysis of the danger of the situation should have no effect on whether a big government solution is the correct one. I agree with the government bans on drugs and prostitution despite the effort and growth in government powers that it has taken to enforce them (I don’t personally care if someone smokes a dooby, but I also don’t want space cakes in every depanneur and even the Dutch seem to be moving in this direction.) If the IPCC is correct global warming is potentially more harmful to our societies than some of the drugs that are banned, so I do think it is important to establish the level of threat that global warming poses before completely rejecting government involvement (however I don’t see any European or North American governments actually getting involved unless China also reduces its share, since it would help the Chinese economy to overtake European and North American economies.)
On the other hand, I do agree that the Al Gore types seem to completely ignore the fact that market forces seem to be leading to less wasteful energy practices. The same people who complain about greenhouse gas also seem to want the government to force companies to lower the price of gas at the pump, when it is the high price of gas (combined with concerns about political instabilities) that will probably encourage efficiency and alternative fuel sources more than anything else.
I would have given anything to meet these “Hot” Swedish “Chicks”. They can complain about anything if they want to. I will be happy to just see them “Hot chicks” and tell them it is them “Hot” buddies that need cooling instead of the AlGore planet.
Is it Hot in here or it is me?
Frankly, the Al Gore type of evangelism makes me suspicious because it isn’t just about saving energy and all that stuff. Oh no. It’s also about extra taxes and increased government regulation, things I can’t happily swallow thanks to my libertarian leanings.
i don’t think that the whole thing requires so much government regulation or even extra taxes. If governments get serious about low carbon economy they should certainly impose taxes on gasoline and probably coal too and gradually increase them. The idea is to make oil/coal expensive but governments can partially compensate consumers by reducing taxes elsewhere.
That in Al Gore’s interpretation it turns into the issue of big government is certainly because the democrats and others are exploiting environmentalism for their political agendas. But it should not be so. There is certainly something weird about democrats complaining about the lack of action against global warming and high gas prices at the same time. Because from the point of view of the common sense you can’t have both at the same time.
The fundamentals are easy to see if we just take a step back and zoom out. Why don’t we all just do that? The question of whether man-made global warming is myth or reality shouldn’t be focused on much because at the end of the day pollution is a fact. Deforestation is a fact. Oil spills are a fact. Given the exploding population of the planet, the immense importance of sustainable development is a fact.
There is no exploding global population. It’s another myth. Half of the humanity lives today in societies with sub replacement fertility and the trend keeps spreading. Apart from some parts of sub Saharran Africa nowhere population is exploding. Even the UN which is notorious for its blown out of any proportions environmental scaremongering admits that global population will stabilize at 2050. Others predict this happening much earlier. And then the global demographic decline will set it.
ar, good observations.
Conan, LOL!
Nobody,
“There is no exploding global population. It’s another myth.”
I know many who would beg to differ. Thanks for the link anyways.
I know many who would beg to differ. Thanks for the link anyways.
You have statistics and other data. What is there to argue about ??
First of all Wikipedia provides two lists of countries ordered by their fertility rates. The first list based on the CIA data compares 2001 to 2007. You can see that all major countries such as China, India, Indonesia, Brazil and others are experiencing massive fertility decline and some are sub replacement or barely replacement already.
You also have an entry called world which shows that the global TFR has declined in seven years from from 2.8 to 2.59 which means that in seven years it has lost 2.1 points. If it loses another 2.1 points in the next seven years it will reach 2.38 which is within the striking distance from 2.33 which Wikipedia defines as the global replacement level. This means that within the next ten years the global fertility as a whole will go sub replacement.
The important thing to notice is that almost any country below the TFR of 4 has its fertility rapidly falling. It’s important to keep this in mind for the next thing.
The next thing is the global fertility map published by Wikipedia. Everything in blue is already sub replacement. Everything in green means the TFR of between 2 and 3 which means that given the rapid fertility decline in that group that you see in the lists, it will be blue by the end of the next decade.
In fact the map as Wikipedia itself admits does not reveal the full scale of the approaching global demographic decline because it does not take into account that replacement level is higher than 2.1 for many nations. Yet it’s 2.1 that Wikipedia uses for the blue color.
The map also only partially reflect the collapse of the Arab fertility in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia TFR is already under 4 and so it should be colored in green and not brown. The same goes about some non Arab Muslim countries like Pakistan. And Algeria has gone sub replacement years ago.
It’s easy to see that you have demographically active regions only in sub-Saharran Africa and some parts of Asia. Latin America is over with demographic transition. Much of Asia is almost over. The West is up to its neck in demographic decline. And as the lists show the global TFR for the whole world is fast approaching sub replacement zone.
People can stand on their knees while begging to differ but the numbers are very clear. People can fool only themselves and a couple of Swedish blonds but they can’t argue with numbers. Of course Wikipedia is right that it may take decades before sub replacement fertility translates into actual population decline. Nevertheless the trend is very clear and it’s not about exploding global population.
Correction:
“The map also only partially reflect the collapse of the Arab fertility in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia TFR is already under 4 and so it should be colored in green and not brown.”
read yellow instead of green
another mistype:
You also have an entry called world which shows that the global TFR has declined in seven years from from 2.8 to 2.59 which means that in seven years it has lost 2.1 points. If it loses another 2.1 points in the next seven years it will reach 2.38 which is within the striking distance from 2.33 which Wikipedia defines as the global replacement level.
It’s not 2.1 but 0.21. The end result is of course the same:
2000-2007 2.8-0.21=2.59
2008-2014 2.59-0.21=2.38
I just had time to go through the link thoroughly.
I believe I stand corrected although I would still be interested in digging further.
Looks like you’re right. This maybe a myth after all.
The thing is that even the UN does not insist that there is going a demographic explosion by orders of magnitude. It’s point is more like the earth is already overpopulated. Wikipedia erroneously says that the UN projects global TFR hitting sub replacement zone by 2050. This is wrong. The UN expects global population to level off at 2050 at 9 billion people but the global TFR will go sub replacement much earlier. But the UN has an absolutely hilarious history of predicting demographics that always happened exaggerated to the extreme. So the global population will probably level off at 8 billion something which compared to the present 6.7 of today is not what will make or break the world.
And even current global population growth is concentrated in Africa so much that it’s difficult to talk about something exploding globally. Because you have two continents - south and north Americas where the population growth may level off in just one or two decades, another one Europe which survives by demographic vampirism as it no longer can maintain its population by its own means and then you have Asia which is also mostly green or blue in the map.
Technically speaking we can quickly finish the whole thing off by concentrating on Africa but again, because the issue of global population is exploited for their political agendas by all sorts of mahatma-gandhis, people and politicians are extremely confused. Some think that it’s hopeless because it’s exploding that much that it’s better not to even think about it. Others may wish to do something but because they think it’s global and exploding they don’t know where to start. In short, anything the noble souls set their eyes on for the sake of making the world a better place gets royally fucked up.
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