: John Schilling <schillin@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
: Though I suppose you could try to convince your friends that Global
: Warming demands they vote for the politician who promises to nuke the
: Chinese...
Well, if by "nuke the Chinese", you mean "create incentives for the
Chinese to develop (preferably non-easily-weaponizable) nuclear technology
to dispalce coal burning" or somesuch, then it may make some sense...
but of course, there's little chance of that.
"Are we gonna fly through space fighting monsters
and teaching alien women to love?"
"If by that you mean trans****ting cargo, then yes!"
--- Fry and Farnsworth
: Sixth, solutions. People tend to care more about things they believe
: they can *do* something about. And while the "here's how to convince
: yoru friends..." rags are full of things you can try to convince your
: friends to do, they don't meet two critical requirements: They have to
: be things your friends can do at what they feel is a reasonable cost,
: and they have to be things they believe will actually make a
: difference.
Hm. Yes. Well, setting global warming aside for a moment, exhuming
fossil fuels and dispersing combustion products into the atmosphere
seems like a reasonably prudent thing to avoid, in a wishy-washy
sort of way. And right now, fossil fuels getting expensive may form
a good incentive that points in the "right" direction. Of course,
as long as they are cheaper than dirt, it almost doesn't matter
what the prudent thing to do is.
In any event, if you really want to put less carbon into the atmosphere
by prostheletizing, find profitable carbon-neutral or carbon-consuming
technology to advocate, rather than telling everybody they have to tighten
their belts. In the extreme short term, though it isn't a sufficient
total solution, start advocating nuclear power. Possibly solar if you
really have to. Possibly even biofuels, if they get closer to profitable.
Oh well.
Really, has anybody ever actually tightened their belt just because it'd
be good to have done so a few decades hence? No, seriously, can anybody
think of a case of it?
Wayne Throop throopw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://sheol.org/throopw
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