Excerpt:
Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate-change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.
The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering.
The German-born Pontiff said that while some concerns may be valid it was vital that the international community based its policies on science rather than the dogma of the environmentalist movement.
His remarks will be made in his annual message for World Peace Day on January 1, but they were released as delegates from all over the world convened on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali for UN climate change talks.
The 80-year-old Pope said the world needed to care for the environment but not to the point where the welfare of animals and plants was given a greater priority than that of mankind.
Posts
2 comments:
Prudence does not mean failing to accept responsibilities and postponing decisions; it means being committed to making joint decisions after pondering responsibly the road to be taken.
Q: When has any decision with large-scale implications ever been made in such a responsible fashion? A: Never. This definition of "prudence" is dead on arrival. Try again.
Other critics of environmentalism have compared the movement to a burgeoning industry in its own right.
Were this true, you would expect to see a bunch of irrational environmentalists frequenting this site and badmouthing all the posts as propaganda from The Man. But that's not what you see here. My impression is that the typical "environmentalist" just wants to know what's true and to then promote the most effective sane reaction to that truth. If there's no consensus on climate change, so be it. Let's just get to the point where people who want to know can really see what's going on in the world.
And what does it mean to be something other than an "environmentalist"? Does that mean you don't really care about your living environment? I can accept that there's plenty of inaccuracies in the climate debate, and I'm glad to learn about them here, but I'm still skeptical. The industrialists and the go-go growth types have been wrong about so very much over the several decades that industrialism has existed. And, coincidentally, their errors have made them filthy-rich. Richer than Al Gore, even.
Is it not possible that the truth lies somewhere in the middle, and that we'd be more prudent to take some moderate precautions while we figure out what's going on, rather than writing the whole thing off as environmental wackiness and continuing with business as usual?
Thank you for your thoughtful comment.
Actually, I don't think you and I are very far apart on our views on global warming.
Some of the proposed global warming "solutions" are actually quite sane--these are things that make sense regardless of any human effect on climate.
Finding good alternatives for fossil fuels is a obviously a wonderful pursuit, and things like reducing deforestation and increasing energy efficiency are completely sensible.
I think we should vigorously pursue all of these. I think we should avoid drastic "solutions" that could only be justified if we were facing a global warming crisis.
Tom
Post a Comment