Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumClimate talk shifts from curbing CO2 to adapting
http://news.yahoo.com/climate-talk-shifts-curbing-co2-adapting-130423769.html;_ylt=AqV2gdhleX6TG.qbGR6P5WMPLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTNmOTM2cTFmBG1pdAMEcGtnA2Y2ZTVhMDU1LThiZDQtM2VmMy1iNGNlLTcwZWVmYmIxY2FjNwRwb3MDNQRzZWMDbG5fV2VhdGhlcl9nYWwEdmVyA2ZiZmJmNjYyLWQ2MTQtMTFlMi1iYjVmLTVmMGU3MWU3OWI0ZA--;_ylg=X3oDMTEyZ25nc2EwBGxhbmcDZW4tVVMEdGVzdANIUl9Tb2NpYWxfTGlnaHRib3g-;_ylv=3The conversation is no longer solely about how to save the planet by cutting carbon emissions. It's becoming more about how to save ourselves from the warming planet's wild weather.
It was Mayor Michael Bloomberg's announcement last week of an ambitious plan to stave off New York City's rising seas with flood gates, levees and more that brought this transition into full focus.
After years of losing the fight against rising global emissions of heat-trapping gases, governments around the world are emphasizing what a U.N. Foundation scientific report calls "managing the unavoidable."
Better late than never, I suppose.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)We have been successful in getting the media to take notice. Congrats all!
Capitalists are now stepping up and making grand decisions.
They will try to build their way out of the problem.
Problem is they will only end up contributing to the problem.
We have this saying, those of us who live with the waters, Water Always Wins.
Downwinder
(12,869 posts)GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Wait - can we still call it a choice if there was no alternative?
We persist in our mistaken thinking that the actions of individual humans can change the collective statistical outcome. They can't, and in fact they never could.
Most people believe that individual actions determine the collective outcome. I mean, it's just obvious, right? I'm pretty sure this is just another flat-earth mistake born of misinterpreted perceptions, though. It falls in the same category as believing that the Sun revolves around the Earth. The scope of human behavior is circumscribed by hard-to-perceive physical principles - principles of physics, chemistry, biology, genetics, gravity and thermodynamics. The recognition of these limits is not an admission of defeat, but simply the completion of the Copernican/Galilean revolution. Mankind moves ever further from the center of the universe - no matter how many people would prefer that it not be so, and therefore decline to look through the telescope.
We have been chained to the thermodynamic tiger since before our ancient ancestors were eukaryotes. The links in that chain are the natural principles of physics, chemistry, biology and genetics. The lock is the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
What individual humans do best is adapt to the inevitable.
OKIsItJustMe
(19,938 posts)There is an alternative.
It is to do nothing.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Cool, I'm down with that. Of course if you're not, you should be free to do whatever seems right to you.