re: #8 EPR-radar

I agree that the collateral damage from our actions is a real problem.

However, when appealing to centrists, right-leaning types, etc. I prefer to avoid anything resembling “tree-hugging” arguments and focus on “Let’s not shit the bed” arguments.

And, to be a total pedant, Venus is a perfectly fine planet that happens to be incompatible with life as we know it. So nothing we can do to the Earth is going to fundamentally affect the planet.

Yes. What’s good for the planet is kind of an empty concept, and certainly nothing that will inspire many other humans to action. The argument has to be put in terms of “what’s good for me and mine”? Here, if you think about it, time is a lot deeper than it looks at first sight.

Suppose, just to make up an example, there was a way to steer the earth and sun like a spaceship, and we could maneuver next to an enormous black hole that had all sorts of asteroids made of solid gold. Imagine we could capture these. But we, in turn, would be captured by the black hole. In ten thousand years, it would destroy us. But RIGHT NOW, maneuvering in to grab the gold would put us past the point of no return.

Would people really go for the gold? I doubt it. Even old people have relatives who are younger, or friends. All of today’s young people will have to bear at least the leading edge of this storm we’ve conjured. And they will care about their children, who will bear the brunt of it.

Now higher CO2 levels aren’t the same as dropping the earth into an incinerator that simply has a long fall to the flames. But the analogy is not too far off. We have, I judge, already crossed the point of no return when it comes to a major melt of the Greenland ice cap. The earth may not be fucked, but Rotterdam, NYC, Shanghai, Tokyo, LA, etc. etc. are. Not to mention Venice and New Orleans. All these cities will be under siege within a century or two. The most vulnerable will have been abandoned within this century, either as a precaution, or in the aftermath of a storm that killed tens of thousands.(Millions?) Right now, the net present value of real estate in those cities is seriously reduced from what most people seem to think it is. Building skyscrapers there, and building them to stand for centuries, is a fool’s errand.

In the same way, consider farmland in Alabama or Texas. Buh-bye. It’s going to be too hot there for growing anything but maybe sorghum or taro. And too dry in most of Texas. Then, kiss off Kansas and Iowa. True, Canada and Siberia will warm, but those places don’t get as much sunlight and sunlight is the energy that drives crop growth. Square mile for square mile, northern croplands aren’t a fair trade.

We are inventive, courageous, adaptable. We’ll develop the wind/solar/nuclear tech we need, we’ll adapt, and we’ll come through chastened but stronger and better organized for the long haul. Capitalism will provide us the organizational scheme that gets this stuff built. The model can be what the US did in WW2. Set a goal and point the private economy at it.

Taxes on carbon based fuel can be the tool that sets the goal. It’s not the best idea to set those taxes real high to start with; we need to improve our wind/solar tech before we go all in on building it. Right now, we can accomplish more for the same cost by improving the energy efficiency of our economy, and by pushing the R&D pace on wind and solar. And we have to get over our nuclear phobia. Nuclear energy can be part of the mix, and it’s more nearly ready to go right now.