Watch the video. It is fascinating. And amusing. 20 minutes.
http://cafehayek.typepad.com/hayek/2007/03/skeptic_of_comb.html
Skeptic of Combating Global Warming
- Thread starter Toro
- Start date
And yet another opinion piece with no evidence. Wow. Whatta thrill that the guy expressed his opinion. Just like a few thousand other people who ignore scientific evidence..
What distresses me most about the global-warming debate is the general failure of many self-styled environmentalists to appreciate the gigantic, gargantuan enormity of the benefits that humans today, worldwide, enjoy from the capitalist institutions that are accused of causing global warming. This obliviousness to the towering benefits of global commerce and industry is scary;
Have capitalists invented fire or what? This is typical of the crap that passes for information these days. Gigantic, gargantuan, enormity of towering piles of industrial bull****. Before capitalism we lived, capitalism is not as they would have us believe responsible for life on the planet. Next we'll be told that natural capitalism was here before birds.
Have capitalists invented fire or what? This is typical of the crap that passes for information these days. Gigantic, gargantuan, enormity of towering piles of industrial bull****. Before capitalism we lived, capitalism is not as they would have us believe responsible for life on the planet. Next we'll be told that natural capitalism was here before birds.
Those TED conferences are great, been a couple in Toronto. This guy has a point. The more information that is freely avalible to everyone then the more people can educate themselves. The $100 dollor computer project is under way and will take away power from governments slowly but surely. The more people can learn of other cultures the more informed they are of alternatives the closer they will be to developing basic infastructure for their health and incomes. If you don't know something exists how can you act on it. Right now the UN sells their reports. I have tried to get info from them and was asked for a credit card. I guess it costs money to gather the info. It may sound hokey but we need to move to a Star Trek type of society or we will only dig ourselves a deep hole. It will take more than one super power to solve our problems.
I don't think for one moment that environmentalists don't understand the benefits we've reaped from capitalism. Capitalism has allowed for better nutrition, better medicine and as Mr.Rosling illustrated longer life expectancies. We've been lumbering on for some time now steadilly increasing our wealth, oblivious to the hazards ahead. Now some of these hazards have been met and mitigated. It's ironic that the pollution we stopped which was producing acid rain was actually responsible for offsetting and even reducing our own greenhouse gas forcings. It seems to me that the capital which has given us these benefits, at a cost to the environment, should also be used to clean up our act. After all it has been capitalism which dragged us upward, giving us greater childhood survival and overall health, why should it not also drag us along to a clean and efficient mode of operation.
Though I doubt the right word is drag, seems more apt that the dragging might go in the other direction.
Though I doubt the right word is drag, seems more apt that the dragging might go in the other direction.
Tonnington are you aware that you have used the phrase "capital which has given us these benifits at a cost"? Drag is not the right word, I think herd would be a better fit.Capitalism has practically destroyed nutrition, most of the processed junk has been stripped of nutriants and laced with chemicals, this costs us billions in associated health care cost each and every year.We've been lumbering on because of the ponderous inefficient capitalist habit of milking the guts out of every enterprize imaginable, long term to them is the life of a pair of work boots for Jebus sake.Steadily increasing our wealth, I'm more than a little suspicious of that as well.:wave:
Hmmmm. Last I heard there were a few different versions of capitalism and a couple are complete opposites of each other. Yet capitalism is the source of all human woes? Absurd. :laughing4:
I'll agree with you Gil but it's hardly the sunlight shinning forth from mother natures buttocks is it.
What they want us to believe is that we've all been sucking the breast of capitalist benevolence when in fact it's humanitys boobs that are being drained and not the other way arround.
Just heard there's a conference about global fresh water coming next month in Europe. Caught something about the need for fresh water going up by 50% within the next 40 or 45 years.
With the planet warming it may change how much water that's available to us.
- http://science.howstuffworks.com/question157.htm
With the planet warming it may change how much water that's available to us.
Of course its just an opinion piece. The point, however, is that many environmentalists want to limit or stop economic growth to do so. But if you go back over the past four decades, economic growth has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and has dramatically increased the health and welfare of almost every country in the world. What would have been the costs of human welfare around the world if we stopped or slowed economic growth 40 years ago, just like many environmentalists argue today? After all, we wouldn't have this supposedly horrific global warming if that had been the case. But millions of people would have died if we'd done so, due to not reducing infant mortality, technological breakthroughs, etc., hundreds of millions would not have been lifted out of absolute poverty, and the standard of living you enjoy certainly wouldn't exist today.
And the video is definitely not an opinion piece. To deny the effects of growth on human health and welfare puts one into the camp of the "few thousand other people who ignore scientific evidence."
Gotta agree with you except about the video; I didn't watch it cuz I still have weird sound.
Anyway, between the environuts and the zealot sceptics, the news and the politicians, a lot of people are confused. So I tell them to ignore the opinion pieces, news, etc. and read reports, studies, science mags, etc. (I hate testimonials in ads, too.
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I'm not the least bit confused about the inherant benevolence of capitalism, it simply does not exist.
Where are those hundreds of millions of people who have been lifted out of abject poverty. With such attentant fanfare they should be readily visable but they aren't anywhere to be found.Elevating someone from a dollar a day to a buck fifty is not entirely the same as being thrust into the ruleing class is it? Anyone who suggests that capitalism will save us from capitalism needs both of thier mutated heads examined and a high pressure full dutch colonic.:wave:
Where are those hundreds of millions of people who have been lifted out of abject poverty. With such attentant fanfare they should be readily visable but they aren't anywhere to be found.Elevating someone from a dollar a day to a buck fifty is not entirely the same as being thrust into the ruleing class is it? Anyone who suggests that capitalism will save us from capitalism needs both of thier mutated heads examined and a high pressure full dutch colonic.:wave:
To ignore its benefits should land someone in the looneybin, too. O rather like my computer. Wouldn't have one if it wasn't for capitalism. Wouldn't be able to have certain fruits, vegetables, seafood, etc. if it wasn't for capitalism either. Think I'll use it and be happy.
Capitalism works, I'v never said that it dosen't but to allow it to roam free like a rampaging bull in a china shop is insane, unregulated it has become religous and perverted itself into an end instead of a means.
With capitalism, man exploits man. With socialism, it's the opposite. (Paraphrasing J K Galbraith)