So there's been lots of cranked up rhetoric over climate change with leftists lately insisting it be called a climate "emergency". First off, there's no question that the climate changes over time. It runs in a cycle. These relatively "stable" periods are actually more the exception than the rule. They are "short" periods of time between the hot and cold swings. We have so far established that the climate does indeed change. But how much is caused by human activity? It would be silly to suggest none considering we negatively impact every other aspect of our environment. But here's the crux of the problem. It's not so much a consumerism issue as it is a population issue.
Modern medicine has fixed it so that global infant mortality rates are way down. Small cuts aren't a potential death sentence. We live longer, sometimes healthier lives. People live longer with disabilities and illnesses that would have killed them when they were quite young just 100 years ago. We can kill off viral and bacterial infections. All of that (and more) sound like wonderful advances and they are, on the surface. But you don't have to scratch much below the surface to see the problems it is causing. David Attenborough stated that "nature is out of balance". It's easy to see why. Human survival rates are out of balance.
What I mean by that is we have a death deficit, or a birth/survival surplus if you prefer. Now obviously in order for a species to survive and thrive you need more births that deaths. But there was a natural balance to them. We have completely upset that balance to the point that the birth/survival surplus is way too high to be sustainable. As a result it has caused a human population explosion. Every year the gap widens more and more between the number of deaths per year and the number of new lives per year. Nature keeps pitching 'em high and we keep ducking 'em.
Lives that cause the need for more electricity to be generated and more resources to power that demand, more forests lopped down to build housing and create farm land because we need to keep growing even more food. More animal species disappearing as we destroy their habitats to build ones for humans. More ocean life disappearing to feed the ever growing masses. More resource extraction for consumer goods, and to keep the farms working.
With traditional power plants all you needed to do was increase their output to meet the increasing demand for energy. And even if you needed a new power plant to add needed capacity, you didn't need much land to build it. But with wind and solar, you have to keep building new installations to meet ever growing demand and that takes up lots of land space. You simply can't make the wind blow harder or the sun shine brighter and/or longer.
All of these knee-jerk solutions to this so-called climate "emergency" are not being thought out. Sure, the ideal is nice and is hard to argue against. After all, who really doesn't want a cleaner, greener planet to live on? But none of these solutions are really workable in the long term simply because of our out of balance population. It'a a mugs game at best that is going to leave our kids and grand-kids with a horrible debt for nothing. And the stupid thing is, you still need oil and coal to make the whole wind and solar thing work.
Of course the problem with the birth/survival rate problem is there's no way to fix it without coming across as some sort of evil bastard. And I sure don't see any of the climate alarmists being willing to martyr themselves for the cause either.
So, until something happens that kills off a LOT of people, and as long as we keep living longer than nature intended, we will always be in this situation. We can do stuff to mitigate the damage and put off the inevitable, for a little while anyway. But the inevitable will happen. Whether it's climate change or something else.
We have been both smart enough and stupid enough to unwittingly engineer our demise. Who'd have thought that something as wonderful, and sometimes even miraculous as modern medicine would be the very catalyst that is causing the destruction of so much wildlife, natural habitat and potentially ourselves.
Modern medicine has fixed it so that global infant mortality rates are way down. Small cuts aren't a potential death sentence. We live longer, sometimes healthier lives. People live longer with disabilities and illnesses that would have killed them when they were quite young just 100 years ago. We can kill off viral and bacterial infections. All of that (and more) sound like wonderful advances and they are, on the surface. But you don't have to scratch much below the surface to see the problems it is causing. David Attenborough stated that "nature is out of balance". It's easy to see why. Human survival rates are out of balance.
What I mean by that is we have a death deficit, or a birth/survival surplus if you prefer. Now obviously in order for a species to survive and thrive you need more births that deaths. But there was a natural balance to them. We have completely upset that balance to the point that the birth/survival surplus is way too high to be sustainable. As a result it has caused a human population explosion. Every year the gap widens more and more between the number of deaths per year and the number of new lives per year. Nature keeps pitching 'em high and we keep ducking 'em.
Lives that cause the need for more electricity to be generated and more resources to power that demand, more forests lopped down to build housing and create farm land because we need to keep growing even more food. More animal species disappearing as we destroy their habitats to build ones for humans. More ocean life disappearing to feed the ever growing masses. More resource extraction for consumer goods, and to keep the farms working.
With traditional power plants all you needed to do was increase their output to meet the increasing demand for energy. And even if you needed a new power plant to add needed capacity, you didn't need much land to build it. But with wind and solar, you have to keep building new installations to meet ever growing demand and that takes up lots of land space. You simply can't make the wind blow harder or the sun shine brighter and/or longer.
All of these knee-jerk solutions to this so-called climate "emergency" are not being thought out. Sure, the ideal is nice and is hard to argue against. After all, who really doesn't want a cleaner, greener planet to live on? But none of these solutions are really workable in the long term simply because of our out of balance population. It'a a mugs game at best that is going to leave our kids and grand-kids with a horrible debt for nothing. And the stupid thing is, you still need oil and coal to make the whole wind and solar thing work.
Of course the problem with the birth/survival rate problem is there's no way to fix it without coming across as some sort of evil bastard. And I sure don't see any of the climate alarmists being willing to martyr themselves for the cause either.
So, until something happens that kills off a LOT of people, and as long as we keep living longer than nature intended, we will always be in this situation. We can do stuff to mitigate the damage and put off the inevitable, for a little while anyway. But the inevitable will happen. Whether it's climate change or something else.
We have been both smart enough and stupid enough to unwittingly engineer our demise. Who'd have thought that something as wonderful, and sometimes even miraculous as modern medicine would be the very catalyst that is causing the destruction of so much wildlife, natural habitat and potentially ourselves.
