A massive shift towards alternative and renewable energy is coming, and we all need to acknowledge that and shift the argument.
For decades, those who have opposed what we currently call “the Climate Movement,” have argued that the Earth is essentially a self-correcting system and that it will adapt to us. Other arguments contend that the Earth has been warming and cooling itself for millions of centuries and it’s simply a cycle that has nothing to do with who or what inhabits it. Some have tried pointing out that computer models are, by their very nature, biased by the data and assumptions that humans choose to enter into them, and still others have tried to be flippant with one-liners like “we can’t even predict tomorrow’s weather correctly, and yet we claim to know what the climate of the Earth will be in 50 years!” https://opr.ca.gov/facts/common-denier-arguments.html
“Climate Deniers,” as we now condescendingly call them, have also tried to point out that almost every single dire prophecy that has been predicted about the impending doom of the planet has never come to pass:
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- In 1970, and for the next 15 years, scientists predicted an ice age by the 21st century.
- In the late 80’s, it shifted to dire warnings about warming, including New York City being underwater by 2019.
- In 2002, we were told that as a result of human behavior, there would be global famine within ten years.
- In 2008, NASA said the Arctic would be ice-free by 2018.
- In that same year, not to be outdone, Former Vice-President Al Gore told us that the Arctic would be ice-free by 2013.
- 2013 hit, and the Arctic was still quite icy and scientists announced that methane would eliminate the Arctic in just 2 years. The US Navy said 3 years.
- In 2009, Prince Charles foretold that the planet would be destroyed by 2017.
https://realclimatescience.com/
All of those predictions and dozens more have obviously been wrong, and every time they are, we are simply told something more dire will be happening at another arbitrary date.
However, it is time for the Climate Deniers to admit that they have lost the argument. Public sentiment is, and has been, overwhelming for two decades, and continues to rise with each new birth. Americans and the world believe that humans are destroying the planet, and that we must move away from fossil fuels and into alternative energy; yes, the sun, and the wind. https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/06/23/two-thirds-of-americans-think-government-should-do-more-on-climate/
And it isn’t governments that will be making the shift happen. In the wake of President Biden’s announcement last week that he wants to reduce America’s emissions by more than 50% in less than a decade, everyone’s hair caught on fire and people started screaming about the “Green New Deal,” and government overreach putting people out of work and ending entire industries; all over junk science!
Screaming and yelling about the government vis a vis Climate Change is like blaming racism on the presence of schools being named after founding fathers who owned slaves. Both are a total waste of time and energy, and do nothing to confront the actual issue.
Industries and corporations across the country are shifting their entire business models towards alternative energy because their research has confirmed that the polls on climate change are more than accurate, and ultimately, businesses exist solely to make profit by giving people what they want. Exxon-Mobil, realizing they’re on the endangered species list is shifting towards renewable energy and developing technology to remove carbon from the air, Google has invested $2 billion into solar and wind, and In Fact, more than 80 percent of the world’s top 500 companies have voluntarily began auditing and announcing their environmental impact numbers in an effort to stay in the good graces of not their country’s governments, but their country’s citizens (i.e., customers). https://theonebrief.com/why-environmental-sustainability-is-becoming-big-for-business-2/
No less than General Motors, the current and reigning gold standard amongst American vehicle manufacturers has already said that it would phase out petroleum-powered cars and trucks and sell only vehicles that have zero tailpipe emissions by 2035. In less than 15 years, my Corvette will be both a collector’s item, and a relic!
The current leader of the pack, who is proving that this move is inevitable is Tesla. One specific complaint of those who are resistant to the climate movement focuses on electric cars. People argue two main points:
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- If they run on electricity, we’ll need to make more of it, and we can only do that with more coal fired plants which will defeat the purpose.
- Electric cars are a useless inconvenience unless and until there are as many charging stations in America as there currently are gas stations.
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Tesla is working on answering both of those in one fell swoop by developing what will ultimately be cars that are essentially built out of solar panels. In other words, the body of your car will also be your fuel source thanks to the sun (and yes solar does still work on cloudy days, dimwit, not to mention we already have the technology to store solar power collected on long sunny days for use later in both the evening and darker, dreary winter months). https://electrek.co/2021/01/19/tesla-structural-battery-pack-first-picture/
All of this, by the way, is as it should be. If companies are the ones leading the climate change movement it will be done leaner, meaner, faster, and better than anything any government could even imagine, let alone implement, for companies will do it all with only one goal in mind; making money by pleasing their customers. In other words, when Tesla eventually rolls out their solar panel car, it won’t be ugly, it will be affordable, and it will be what people want to drive.
So, climate deniers need to stop screaming about denying the science, for it is accepted as settled law and the change is nigh. Instead, it is time to focus attention on the ways in which we will all make this shift, rather than standing with hands on hips, pouty face on maximum and uttering, “no, I don’t wanna.” As many of our parents used to say in the face of such childishness, “too bad, you’re gonna, so put on your big boy pants and let’s go.”
Such outlandish and stupid proposals as are found in the actual proposed “Green New Deal,” like eliminating air planes and cows are non-starters. That 14 page proposal literally reads like a 3rd grader wrote it. It’s adorable at best.
Rather than allowing ourselves to be told that there’s only one way to do this, it is time to accept that we’re doing it, and then insist that it be done wisely, and in a way that causes as little pain as possible to the fewest number of people and professions. If companies want to pursue ways to create beef in a laboratory, great, go for it; but we’re not going to simultaneously eliminate farmers and ranchers. If we can figure out how to get more out of wind and solar, then by all means, pursue that, but let’s also put the same time and effort into figuring out how to address issues of nuclear waste so that we can start to once again build nuclear power plants, and don’t tell me that it can’t be done…if we can successfully figure out how to harness a breeze into something that powers more than a sailboat, then we can jolly-well-good figure out how to eliminate and/or make safe the byproduct of nuclear energy.
Those are just a couple small examples from a much longer list of common sense that needs to be injected into the Climate Change discussion, and since this IS happening, it’s going to take ALL of us to make sure it happens correctly.
With it said and acknowledged that this is the direction we’re headed, let’s some of us remember that all of it is, of course, a colossal waste of everything from time to money and, ironically, energy. We are, of course, arrogantly trying to save a planet that doesn’t need saving. Only humans could be so conceited as to think that we could cure something that we claim is sick when we can’t even explain or actually prove how exactly it got here.
I always think of two works of art that perfectly, beautifully, and skillfully sum up the lunacy that is this movement. One is comedian George Carlin’s seven-minute diatribe from almost 30 years ago that, to this day, is spot-on perfect in every way possible. Do yourself a favor and watch it, even if you’ve already seen it as it is irrefutable in its’ logic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB0aFPXr4n4
Or, if you’d rather read it, here’s the transcript: https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2019/08/22/george-carlin-saving-planet-transcript/
Some might go as far as to claim that Carlin was inspired by a little book called “Jurassic Park,” (yes, it was a book first), which was written only two years before Carlin’s brilliant sketch. My favorite passage of not only that novel, but one of my favorites of all time, also brilliantly explains how misguided and self-important we are:
“You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There’s been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away — all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears the earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It’s powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. Do you think this is the first time that’s happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine. When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago we didn’t have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can’t imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven’t got the humility to try. We’ve been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we’re gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.”
