Ghmothwdwhso wrote:
If you agree with that 2007 court ruling, you should turn off your computer, cell phone and other non-essential appliances immediately, and never turn them on again.
That's poor logic. Noting that something can be harmful doesn't mean it is incumbent upon us to do absolutely anything to abate the risk. I mean, we know that people are killed in car accidents (and this is something for which there is no debate), but that doesn't mean we insist that everyone stop driving.
It isn't an all-or-nothing approach, and putting the debate in such black-and-white terms simply begs the question. The reality is that there are tradeoffs to be made, and those are essentially a policy decision. We can reduce our GDP (with real, concomitant effects on poverty, QOL, etc.) to combat global warming or we can let it happen. As humans, we're not very good at discounting the future to address something that has a small chance of occurring but would be catastrophic if it happened. E.g., if we're 95% sure that global warming won't happen, but that 5% would result in disasterous effects, would it be appropriate to scale back GDP growth 1% right now to account for it? What about .001%? What if we're 80% sure catastrophic global warming won't happen? Then how much GDP hit is appropriate?
These are policy questions. Essentially, we're trading off a sure hit to our opulent lifestyle now versus a small possibility of a catastrophic hit to our kids' lifestyle in the future. While I'm not sure where I fall on the debate, I do think it's disgusting and self-absorbed to mortgage the future to feed the consumption of the present (both in the sense of ignoring the possible effects of climate change and by taking on massive debt national to fund our dionysian excess now).