Two things.
- The world is rapidly becoming a hostile place and its security structure will soon resemble the period before the world wars. This is a much more pressing danger, that ecology is. It is also as much a global public good as is ecology and very costly. So, if we do not get it solved, there will be no good reason to worry about ecology, while it is far too expensive as long as we need to spend so much on international security.
- If we want to traverse into an ecological framework of the type probably necessary, we must do it in the most efficient way. To take the measures that will require, we will have to explain how bad it will be. At the moment politicians and ecology lobbyists are lying about the consequences and even the dimension of the changes requires at today's level of technology.
The very first thing to do is, however, to explain why the presently living should undertake such severity against themselves for people that they will never know and are not yet born.
You missed my point in relation to pollution of the Oceans (which by the way is a clear and present danger - much more so than CO2 and the evidence for Ocean pollution is "NOT" debated among experts in the way "global warming" is)
If we wanted we could reduce the CO2 flow in very short order (if there was some real and tangible emergency). In addition, there are all kinds of way to reduce CO2 emissions without reducing coal or fossil fuel use. For example, every plant on the planet should be running their stacks through a engineered bio-filter ; This is basically creating a green space where bacteria flourishes (not expensive and very effective). The bacteria eat the CO2 - and filter out other nasty byproducts. This technology has existed for many decades ... it is that politicians, scientists and industry have their heads stuck so far up their (you know where).
Filtering the Oceans ? Good friggen luck with that. Two can's of Tuna a week and you will exceed the mercury guidelines for pregnant women. Persistent Organic Pollutants (POP) accumulate through bioaccumulation. Small fish have small levels - medium fish eat many small fish and have increased levels - larger fish eat many medium fish and thereby accumulate even more toxins. Seals eat the big fish.. and Polar bears eat the seals. A Polar bear is a toxic dump.
The breast milk of Inuit women in the north is too contaminated to be put on a store shelf. ... from eating Seal meat.
Industrialization is exacerbating this problem. In 1800 there were 1 Billion people on the planet. North America and Europe was maybe 200 million. The industrial revolution of NA and Europe was then over 200 million people. China and India alone are 2.5 Billion people - never mind Indonesia and other places.
Roughly 1.4 Billion of the worlds population is industrialized. In terms of utilization of resources ... (from a study about 5 years ago) We are at (36) someone eating a bowl of rice a day in Africa is (1) ... the average Chinese person was at (11). The study stated that if China was to realize our level of consumption ... world resource production would have to double.
Just China. Now China may not to our level but they will likely get half way... add in India and the rest and this is a massive pollution nightmare. China, India, and numerous other countries dump stuff directly into the Oceans.
This is (IMO) - and the opinion of everyone I have talked to in the environmental clean-up business (not to be confused with "environmentalist - we are the people that clean up the mess) ... sitting at big round lunch and dinner tables at conferences ... agrees.
If we mess up the Oceans we will not have to worry about "Climate Change". Most of the worlds Oxygen comes from the Oceans. It really is not a garbage dump.
The problem is that everyone jumped on the "Global Warming" bandwagon. It became political and so that is where all the money and attention went.
You can find stuff on Ocean Pollution - in small print on Page 72 of the NYT or in Scientific Journals that the public never reads.
At the end of the day, it is the international financiers and the Oligopolies (Oligarchs) that are the root cause of the problem (but that is a long story)
