Three non-tech essentials for combating climate change
Posted by Joseph Romm (Guest Contributor) at 7:56 PM on 07 Apr 2008

I give even less credence to the ‘all previous challenges’ argument which strikes me as basically identical to saying ‘all my ancestors survived to reproduce’ – it adds no information at all, because our presence evidences the survival of previous humans. Further, the successful reproduction of my ancestors doesn’t imply that I will survive to reproduce, given that lots of other people fail to do so (just as other species have gone extinct, and past civilizations have disappeared).

Classic Maya collapse

The Easter Islanders are a clear case. The same may be true of the Maya. The same will soon be true of the Inuit.

Your argument is very problematically based on the notion that the interests that count in our democracy are the interests of the population overall, and not the interests of the elite, special interests, industry, etc… This is normal, the worry is that the interest of the elite might not coincide with the public interest (it certainly may – and in this case it will look as if it is the public interest which counts). This would be most fortunate.

It is a very normal aspect of democracy that the public interest doesn’t count.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_Rzo5BzGqY

Check out these photos of Dubai; the first is from 1990 and the second photo is the same street in 2003.

I agree. People commonly argue that humanity has overcome all previous challenges, so all bets are that we will manage this one. The trouble is, virtually all previous problems could be addressed through affluence. More overall wealth let us live much longer and healthier lives. Climate change requires either austerity or very effective decarbonization of technology. As such, it is quite a different beast from the troubles that have presented themselves to humanity in the past.

Tristan,

I agree that there will always be winners and losers from technological shifts. The issue is less whether one company or industry benefits or suffers, and more whether the overall quality of life of the population improves or worsens. In a democratic state, politicians can survive industrial reorganization, they cannot survive deep-seated public displeasure.

However, believing that technology saving us is somehow distinct from sacrifice is a mistake, it’s no better than believing in Jesus. For example, the USA goes to war to secure its oil interests, to keep oil cheap. It could choose to not pursue this kind of foreign policy, and the result would be it would have more difficulty procuring oil, the price of oil would go up, and other non oil based technologies would flourish. But this would be a sacrifice, citizens of the USA have become used to having cheap oil because of alliances as part of an interventionist foreign policy.

My point is not the USA should have foreign policy X or Y, my point is there is no such thing as technological development as distinct from sacrifice, because subsidy already exists on the non-technological side. If we choose to divert subsidies from oil companies to non-oil companies, which is probably required for the sake of developing the technologies fast enough, this will be the kind of sacrifice that if strong enough, could get leaders turfed out.

The cloudbook has approximately the same performance as my ibook, costs 1/4 the original price, and is much smaller. Certainly it is evidence of “faster better cheaper smaller”.