What I'm less convinced of is that those changes will necessarily be disasterous for either human beings or the planet. I... honestly never know what to say when people say things like this. For some reason it always kind of stuns me, so I say nothing for a very long time.
I actually believe (and tell my kids) that global warming will in all likelihood have little or no real negative consequences for us. And by "us" I mean mostly me and Chris and our boys, but also most white North American professionals, and, to a lesser extent, most North Americans. And most Europeans. If anything, some of its effects may be kind of nice. I'm not exactly a fan of Canadian winters; it might be very nice to not have to shovel as much, or endure as many consecutive weeks of bitter, icy darkness.
I firmly believe that we will, in all likelihood, be able to adapt to most of the unpleasant changes. Some kinds of foods may become scarcer as some arable land becomes unusable. We'll learn to cultivate them elsewhere. Drinking water may become scarcer throughout the planet; we've got a hell of a lot of it up here. There may be droughts and severe storms. I doubt many of those will hit Ottawa.
What I tell my kids, though, is that we are not the only ones who matter. We can find ways around crop failures and water shortages and severe weather events; much of the rest of the world doesn't have that luxury. Re. the changes not "necessarily being disastrous for either human beings or the planet"... there's already people in Bangladesh, Darfur, Europe, many Pacific islands, and New Orleans who might not agree with that assessment. I know most of them are/were poor and dark, and I know many of them were probably fated to die early and painfully of floods and water shortages and heat waves and severe weather events anyway. But most indicators point to the fact that more of them are dying of these things than ever before - and not just because there are more people on the planet - and that they will continue to suffer and die, in greater numbers, as the planet's climate changes in unexpected ways.
I won't even bother to address whether we should only be concerned about other human beings, or whether we should also give a damn about other living beings that are already suffering and dying as the world changes too quickly for them to adapt.
I'm even less convinced that we CAN stop global warming, at least while maintaining current rates of human population expansion. See above re. cleaner cars, cleaner homes, reorganizing urban patterns, etc etc. That's only the tip of what we could and should be doing, the things that we could do without much sacrifice. There's a crapload of other stuff we could do if we actually cared, but since most of it would involve us giving up some of our creature comforts and cool stuff, I don't bother to bring it up because that's just a no-go area for most North Americans.
So I'm doing my bit by having chosen not to have children. Which is an admirable choice. I'm choosing to teach mine that we have a responsibility to the planet as a whole, not just to ourselves and our country, or even our species.
We choose to locate most of our activities (extra-curriculars, medical care, groceries) within walking distance, and walk there unless there's a good reason not to (and no, "I don't feel like it" isn't good enough.) We keep our house slightly uncomfortably cool in winter and don't have air conditioning in summer. We drive the most fuel-efficient car we can afford. We try to stay informed, and find other ways of reducing our negative impact on the environment.
And, more importantly than all of that, we vote for politicians who promise to do things like try to meet Kyoto's feeble goals, or invest in public transportation, or pass other laws that will make it so that we're not the only idiots walking while our neighbours drive their SUVs to the corner store for milk because hey, why not.
no subject
I... honestly never know what to say when people say things like this. For some reason it always kind of stuns me, so I say nothing for a very long time.
I actually believe (and tell my kids) that global warming will in all likelihood have little or no real negative consequences for us. And by "us" I mean mostly me and Chris and our boys, but also most white North American professionals, and, to a lesser extent, most North Americans. And most Europeans. If anything, some of its effects may be kind of nice. I'm not exactly a fan of Canadian winters; it might be very nice to not have to shovel as much, or endure as many consecutive weeks of bitter, icy darkness.
I firmly believe that we will, in all likelihood, be able to adapt to most of the unpleasant changes. Some kinds of foods may become scarcer as some arable land becomes unusable. We'll learn to cultivate them elsewhere. Drinking water may become scarcer throughout the planet; we've got a hell of a lot of it up here. There may be droughts and severe storms. I doubt many of those will hit Ottawa.
What I tell my kids, though, is that we are not the only ones who matter. We can find ways around crop failures and water shortages and severe weather events; much of the rest of the world doesn't have that luxury. Re. the changes not "necessarily being disastrous for either human beings or the planet"... there's already people in Bangladesh, Darfur, Europe, many Pacific islands, and New Orleans who might not agree with that assessment. I know most of them are/were poor and dark, and I know many of them were probably fated to die early and painfully of floods and water shortages and heat waves and severe weather events anyway. But most indicators point to the fact that more of them are dying of these things than ever before - and not just because there are more people on the planet - and that they will continue to suffer and die, in greater numbers, as the planet's climate changes in unexpected ways.
I won't even bother to address whether we should only be concerned about other human beings, or whether we should also give a damn about other living beings that are already suffering and dying as the world changes too quickly for them to adapt.
I'm even less convinced that we CAN stop global warming, at least while maintaining current rates of human population expansion.
See above re. cleaner cars, cleaner homes, reorganizing urban patterns, etc etc. That's only the tip of what we could and should be doing, the things that we could do without much sacrifice. There's a crapload of other stuff we could do if we actually cared, but since most of it would involve us giving up some of our creature comforts and cool stuff, I don't bother to bring it up because that's just a no-go area for most North Americans.
So I'm doing my bit by having chosen not to have children.
Which is an admirable choice. I'm choosing to teach mine that we have a responsibility to the planet as a whole, not just to ourselves and our country, or even our species.
We choose to locate most of our activities (extra-curriculars, medical care, groceries) within walking distance, and walk there unless there's a good reason not to (and no, "I don't feel like it" isn't good enough.) We keep our house slightly uncomfortably cool in winter and don't have air conditioning in summer. We drive the most fuel-efficient car we can afford. We try to stay informed, and find other ways of reducing our negative impact on the environment.
And, more importantly than all of that, we vote for politicians who promise to do things like try to meet Kyoto's feeble goals, or invest in public transportation, or pass other laws that will make it so that we're not the only idiots walking while our neighbours drive their SUVs to the corner store for milk because hey, why not.