The methods suggested for dealing with such climate change range from the odd to the ludicrous and from the laughable to the suicidal. Nearly every action/awareness campaign comes down to one simple concept, that being the reduction of product consumption.
We are urged to use less and less and less. Use less gasoline. Use less toilet paper. Use less electricity. Use less light. Use less food. Use less water. Do not use the flash on your camera. Use fewer shoe laces with sandals. Use fewer lawnmower blades by cutting your grass with scissors.
However, all this restraint of product usage will not result in a decrease of production of these goods. Since nearly all of these products are extremely popular a decrease in the purchase rate of these products will only result in a lower price due to production in excess of sale. In such an event the overall market value and sale rate would end up creeping back up to pre-boycott levels because of the discounted value.
The reason good products decrease in their production over time is not because they are bad for the environment; it is because they are replaced in the market with a better value. This is partly how the market encourages development and produces better products over time. Color televisions did not come about due to a boycott of black and white televisions nor did they come about because black and white televisions were drilling a hole into the ozone layer (and for you true socialists, color TVs do not exist because evil rich people conspired to keep poor people watching black and white TVs). Color televisions exist because people wanted them and someone provided for those people and made a fair market wealth in the process.
The most concerning thing about the global warming movement is the stunningly sweeping ignorance of the nature of life in the nations which truly do use fewer products. Many nations in Africa are under severe duress due to the lack of products being used. Clean water is scarce. Food is extremely valuable. Medicine is pure gold. These are people groups with absolutely nothing.
Yet, global warming alarmists are actively pushing through laws in these nations requiring that coal not be allowed to be burned due to emissions, oil not be used for its ‘toxic’ byproduct. How is anyone with next to nothing supposed to power mere light to read or heat to boil water with an expensive and inconsistent wind turbine or even more expensive and cost-inefficient solar panels? The fact of life remains, one can only use less until less becomes too little to sustain the most basic of life.
Recently, Time magazine ran an article that blatantly stated the cause of genocide in Darfur is global warming and not racism or radically corrupt warlords. Claiming that racial hate had a minor part to play the article tried to argue that the decreasing amounts of useful soil and water in combination with an overcrowded population has caused violence for resources and that this strife is the result of “greedy” capitalist-charged climate change. Yet, this sort of speculative reporting is only considered acceptable because speculation is how the alarmists accept the so-called-science behind such notions. It is more akin to creative writing; political opinion masqueraded as factual, unbiased notation.
It certainly could not be the racist and anti-non-Muslim attitudes of the terrorists we face the world over that are responsible for such genocidal atrocities. But Darfur not a nation which uses so little of the products that are clearly responsible for our planets’ demise? Should we not all desire to replicate such bare minimum standards?
We have replaced the threat of warlords with the threat of automaker CEOs. We have replaced all sense of humanity with a mythological sense of ecology. We have replaced the threat of radical terrorism with the terror induced threat that freedom, capitalism and technology have such adverse affects as to wipe out all possibility of life on Earth.
As though industry has the intent to harm the atmosphere and conversely everything dependant on it, the media has engaged in a production guilt campaign not only meant to demonize the production and usage of nearly every conceivable good but also to strike at the heart of liberty. Rich nations are not noted as such for their sweltering bank accounts. Wealth is noted as physical possession which can also be described as the ability of oneself to provide for oneself in whatever desire presented. That is to say that people who are wealthy are able to satisfy their physical desires beyond food, drink and rest and that this is only one side of the coin.
The other side of the coin, obviously, is the work necessary to provide such wealth advantages. Not only do the wealthy provide good products which the customers obviously find valuable inasmuch as they pay for them, the wealthy also provide jobs through direct employment as well as through the items they purchase creating market expansion across the board.
This relates to the global warming campaign in that such a lifestyle is declared ‘in excess of necessity’ and as such even by those who live an identically lascivious lifestyle (ahem: Al Gore). Those who use more and produce more are clearly more at fault for the dire predicament the world is in and certainly must be made to pay more (through taxation), according to the Gore ilk. But should we desire to live at the absolute, bare minimum? After all, the war on poverty seeks to raise the lifestyle of those who already live at the bare minimum, albeit with pro-taxation means. If we all are homeless from now on perhaps the world would not explode in 2010 from our evil emissions.
However, it should be noted that one person having more wealth does not apprehend wealth from another person. Think about it this way, if Bill Gates produces a new line of software for whatever purpose and makes another half a billion dollars, did he take that money from you? Were you going to produce that product and make that money except that he did it first? Did the people who purchase the software deem it a good enough value to trade their hard earned money for the product?
Strife is not caused by the acquisition of wealth by someone else unless that person is a warlord accessing that wealth through violent force and is intent on violently keeping others from accessing wealth. General strife in the world is caused by people not producing and therefore not consuming.
If people live in an area such as Darfur where there is little to no available materials to produce anything then the obvious and best choice for them is to get to another area whether by train or car or simple walking. If the governments of these people are preventing them from accessing wealth by these means then it is an oppression of freedom thus a violation of human rights. As yet the pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in America cannot be denied in this nation through socialist economic politics without completely betraying and destroying the Constitution.
The further benefit of having a protection of wealth is the advances in medical research as well as the invention of more efficient ways to produce food. America is a picture perfect nation of both markets flourishing. There is no better place in the world to get medical care or consumable goods. Past that is the eco-friendly method all these things are produced.
Do not be frightened by the word eco-friendly, merely be wary of it. In this instance, eco-friendly refers to our ability to control our waste byproducts. We process our sewage into harmless chemicals. We process our garbage and create safe and degradable landfills. We recycle large portions of our trash over and over and over. A standard ream of printer paper is partially composed of material that has been recycled over a dozen times.
Nuclear technology is expensive and complex, yet many nations have incorporated nuclear technology as a safe and emission less way to power the enormous needs of a healthily growing economy. Many environmentalists fear the usage of electrical generation through nuclear power and cite several of the more well known nuclear accidents. Indeed, nuclear power has been put at a complete standstill in America since the 70s due solely to the extremely rare accident (as though power generation is safe by all other means).
The hybridization of cars in both electrical form and gas/ethanol form requires advanced technology and is quite costly. Arguably, only a robust economy can afford such new advancements in energy generation.
Even past such engines, pollutants do still creep into our atmosphere from other sources, yet our economy and our technology allow us to clean such pollutants far better than any impoverished nation.
In Cincinnati several years back, for example, a tanker truck wrecked on a highway and spilled cooking oil all over the road making it unsafe for travel. The solution to clean up the mess which repelled water was Dawn dish soap which became a good advertising campaign for the company. This comes into perspective even clearer when looking at the government controlled farce of a nuclear science test at the Russian Chernobyl power facility. Because of the lack of understanding by government officials in control of the reactor the meltdown was not an accident, it was unstoppable.
The point here is that a robust economy is far better at handling crises than is a government monopoly. Under no reason and no circumstance should the freedom of the people to choose in the market a force to be laid to rest.