Hee hee hee ... I promise not to jump on you, Cendri, but I had to smirk a little because I work in a lab that's made itself famous through climate change research. ;)
I liked your point about how the solutions that people are offering aren't solutions at all because I agree with you 100%. I hate small-scale environmentalism and volunterism (aka, I voluntarily choose to buy more fuel efficient cars, etc.) because it's been pretty much universally shown not to work.
My older brother has a theory about all of this (this is what Arseneau siblings do when they get together; they talk science and politics. XD). Vincent happens to be a history major and he wrote a dissertation on emancipation history in England. He likes to compare it to the climate change problem now. In essence, during the emancipation movement, people were beginning to see slavery as a problem and they wanted to do something but, unfortunately, the entire British imperial system relied on the slave trade. They needed someone to help them redefine their system.
So, that's kind of where I see us as a society right now. We need a roadmap for change. That, unfortunately, is not something that scientists are particularly good at. Even if we say - well, we need to move towards more sustainable technologies, impose carbon taxes etc. etc. ... well, scientist might have a certain amount of respect but I don't think that we have what you could call a social capital. Scientists don't lead revolutions.
The idea of change is already building a social capital though. (The US primaries interest me for this exact reason.) And I think that a real, definitive change will happen soon - within our or our children's generation. It's just a question of stress in the system. We're going to have to adapt to this new environment eventually.
(Besides, peak oil will soon make this entire debate innevitable anyways. :p)
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*couldn't keep quiet*
Date: 2008-03-13 10:11 pm (UTC)I liked your point about how the solutions that people are offering aren't solutions at all because I agree with you 100%. I hate small-scale environmentalism and volunterism (aka, I voluntarily choose to buy more fuel efficient cars, etc.) because it's been pretty much universally shown not to work.
My older brother has a theory about all of this (this is what Arseneau siblings do when they get together; they talk science and politics. XD). Vincent happens to be a history major and he wrote a dissertation on emancipation history in England. He likes to compare it to the climate change problem now. In essence, during the emancipation movement, people were beginning to see slavery as a problem and they wanted to do something but, unfortunately, the entire British imperial system relied on the slave trade. They needed someone to help them redefine their system.
So, that's kind of where I see us as a society right now. We need a roadmap for change. That, unfortunately, is not something that scientists are particularly good at. Even if we say - well, we need to move towards more sustainable technologies, impose carbon taxes etc. etc. ... well, scientist might have a certain amount of respect but I don't think that we have what you could call a social capital. Scientists don't lead revolutions.
The idea of change is already building a social capital though. (The US primaries interest me for this exact reason.) And I think that a real, definitive change will happen soon - within our or our children's generation. It's just a question of stress in the system. We're going to have to adapt to this new environment eventually.
(Besides, peak oil will soon make this entire debate innevitable anyways. :p)
-T. pirate