BTW, nope. It was actually a late 19th century natural history textbook’s, heavily racist I might add, examination of the romanticizing of the “Noble Savage”.

But the politics and prejudices of the observer don’t invalidate the observation. Namely that all humans, aside from the authors narrow definition of civilized man of course, would naturally strip the resources they found desirable and rarely gave much thought to preserving anything or where they tossed the garbage.

Of course, the authors still believed that piping raw sewage into a river, and burying anything that won’t flush, was the end of waste disposal and strip mines would become flowing pastures.

The only caveat (that could apply to any initiative) is that someone needs to champion liberty from unwarranted policy. And someone needs to ensure good stewardship of the policies. (Taking actions that are costly, but unproductive should be scrutinized and discarded for more effective measures).

You’ve open my mind on the issue a little more. Thank you.

BTW, was the book ‘Collapse’ by Jared Diamond?

You gonna bash the movies “Cars” and “Toy Story” for trying to brainwash little kids into believing that inanimate objects can really talk?

We need t make a fundamental change in how we produce and use energy and the people who will be providing that new energy must make the initial investment even if they have to be compelled. And all the gnashing of teeth over Kyoto and other proposals is counterproductive.

Screw international agreements. We need to take unilateral action and might have to eat some costs. Big deal. It’s past time to start taking risks. I sure would love to see it begin with a law mandating that every passenger vehicle sold in this country achieve a minimum of 40mpg.

Another promising idea is for the energy industry to pay a large portion of their taxes (It would not necessarily entail a net increase in taxes.) to a managed alternative energy fund. And the administrators of the fund would be mandated to invest in real projects which, though they may need development, actually produce energy or reduce greenhouse gas. Such a program would effectively force the energy industry to innovate in order to earn their current tax breaks by, essentially, paying them out of their taxes. Ultimately the only “redistribution of wealth” would be between the “dirty” part of the industry and the “green”.

We made a good start once, then we adjusted to the new fuel prices and got greedy and lazy.

I believe the worst thing that could happen to the current environmental movement would be a reversal in fuel prices. High gas prices have probably done more for conservation and innovation than other initiaves could ever hope to achieve.

Progress on conservation, lower emissions and new innovation can and should continue, while we continue the debate on the most effective ways to accomplish the common goals.

The point is that we have won other environmental battles, or at least made improvements, we MUST mobilize on this one. Who knows, maybe Mother Nature, or Artemis, or Monsanto, or God will meet us half way with a CO2 scrubbing, edible, super-algae?

We do not have to make significant sacrifices, individually or as a nation, to start the change. We made a good start once, then we adjusted to the new fuel prices and got greedy and lazy. There’s no logical reason it will hurt anywhere near as much as the energy industry, and their shills, would have the sheeple believe. The first lesson we need to remember is that conservation saves money, for everyone but the energy industry. Everything else follows from that simple realization.

Eff carbon credits and eff waiting for the rest of the World. We led everyone into this mess, it’s up to us to lead everyone out. We need to make a higher percentage of our energy from cleaner sources and stop stupid, profligate waste. We need to build smaller, slower, cars. We need to pay whatever it costs for the cleanest use of existing fuels. We need to walk, bike or bus (I know it’s sometimes impossible and seldom convenient. Boo-hoo!)We need to rebuild “the grid” so the roofs of vacant houses are supplying power to the office down the street and we need to look into new, efficient, on-sight generation for industry. We have to stop wasting power pumping it vast distances and replace mechanical drive trains with cables and motors. We need to develop state of the art green technologies, sell them to anyone with cash, and insist on “green” imports. We need to stop debating as if the problem wasn’t identified decades ago.

http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-06/ff_heresies_07trading

carbon credits aren’t the answer.

Here’s some of the commitments from Bali (you’ll remember the U.S. was booed for dragging it’s feet):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7146132.stm

Maybe bureaucrats were booing because they understand the carbon credit market will be worth an estimated 3 trillion dollars (of nothing but redistributed wealth, not new innovation) by 2020.

But, the inks not even dry and the BBC has uncovered examples like this:

The credits are generated by a United Nations-run scheme called the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

The mechanism gives firms in developing countries financial incentives to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

But in some cases, carbon credits are paid to projects that would have been realised without external funding.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7436263.stm

The BBC World Service investigation found examples of projects in India where this appeared to be the case.

Arguably, this defeats the whole point of the CDM scheme, set up under the Kyoto climate change protocol, as these projects are getting money for nothing.

The findings reinforce doubts that the CDM is leading to real emission cuts, which is not good news for the effort to combat climate change.

And in one case a company is earning truly staggering sums of money from the carbon credits it is receiving – perhaps as much as $500m (£250m) over a period of 10 years – for a project it says it would have carried out without the incentive of the CDM.

I’m still not confident of the need for taking money from the U.S. and Europe and sending it to China, India, and other emerging markets.

We all want a healthier planet, but let’s support the policies that make it healthier and leave the redistribution of wealth to socialists.

Lars has a 19 year old step daughter who he fears can not tell the difference between fantasy and reality…

Scary…

.

And I won’t shed a tear for the management of GM, but that too is unnecessary. They just kept whining about how hard it is to build competitive cars when they have continually lagged behind in products people want.

If the American car industry used the energy/pollution issue to make that 100mpg, heck! 45mpg, hybrid? They would have a chance. But they’ll piss around trying to fit the maximum number of cup-holders in a 15 year old design. Someone is going to make the next Model T. And I fear it won’t be an American company.

During the European heat wave of 2003 that killed tens of thousands, the temperature in parts of France hit 104 degrees. Nearly 15,000 people died in that country alone.

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2007/01/23/summer-heat-history/

I heard the news tonight on MSNBC that GM may be headed for bankruptcy. Perhaps the extinction of automobiles will happen before the extinction of humans. We can hope, I guess.

I don’t oppose the changes you suggest (I support most of them); only the use of apocalyptic forecasts to stymie debate or compel unproductive (unrelated) redistributions of wealth.

Hot future shock: Heat wave temperatures to soar By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
Wed Jul 2, 4:04 PM ET

Sterl’s computer model shows that by the end of the century, high temperatures for once-in-a-generation heat waves will rise twice as fast as everyday average temperatures. Chicago, for example, would reach 115 degrees in such an event by 2100. Paris heat waves could near 109 with Lyon coming closer to 114.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080702/ap_on_sc/sci_extreme_heat

Why the fuss over Larson’s comments, and not Carlin’s?

Because Carlin’s dead?