Climate Change is a ‘political football’. The ‘offensive team’ - governments and their crony partners - have easily advanced the ball due to a weak ‘defensive team’ - the taxpayers.
Remember back in 2008's financial crisis, when much of the automobile industry was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy? The solution back then was to bail out the industry and provide artificial supports like the "Cash for Clunkers" program. Whether one agrees that automobiles are good or not, we have repeated the economic imperative of propping up sacred industries for decades. The result is that consumers and industry are encouraged to dispose of durable goods and replace them with newer ones, whether the goods are at the end of their useful life cycle or not.
Now since the signing of the Paris accord, the manufacture of anything will become prohibitively expensive, regardless of its benefit to consumers or society, because the foundation on which we produce is based on energy. That extends to other necessities like the need for heating our homes and businesses in our northern climate for close to half of the year (at least until the mythical spectre of global warming solves that problem).
Somewhere in between these two paradigms is a happy medium, where people of modest means can afford the goods needed for a decent life., without forcing them to over-consume.
Lastly, I would ask the alarmisits to imagine what our atmosphere would look like if billions of people went back to using firewood and dung to cook their meals instead of natural gas and electricity.
Remember back in 2008's financial crisis, when much of the automobile industry was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy? The solution back then was to bail out the industry and provide artificial supports like the "Cash for Clunkers" program. Whether one agrees that automobiles are good or not, we have repeated the economic imperative of propping up sacred industries for decades. The result is that consumers and industry are encouraged to dispose of durable goods and replace them with newer ones, whether the goods are at the end of their useful life cycle or not.
Now since the signing of the Paris accord, the manufacture of anything will become prohibitively expensive, regardless of its benefit to consumers or society, because the foundation on which we produce is based on energy. That extends to other necessities like the need for heating our homes and businesses in our northern climate for close to half of the year (at least until the mythical spectre of global warming solves that problem).
Somewhere in between these two paradigms is a happy medium, where people of modest means can afford the goods needed for a decent life., without forcing them to over-consume.
Lastly, I would ask the alarmisits to imagine what our atmosphere would look like if billions of people went back to using firewood and dung to cook their meals instead of natural gas and electricity.