Reply #9: You don't need 20 feet to have a catastrophe, that's the myth, you only need 5 feet... [View All]

[Solon]

or less. In fact, already, there are rumblings of disasters just waiting to happen, Bangladesh/India relations are somewhat strained, mainly due to India's refusal to accept climate refugees. I addition, many small island nations, like Tuvalu and Nauru are already beginning to feel the affects of climate change, and may, in the future, have to abandon their nations entirely. A large portion of the world's population lives at or near sea level, that's just a fact, millions of people, and they literally have no where else to go.

The "doom and gloom" shit isn't directed at you personally, but at societies at large, most people think short term, that's just a fact, and as a result, their governments reflect the same view. Hell, we don't even have any sort of national plan to make fossil fuel consumption FLAT for the next 10 years, and we need to decrease that by 60% or more in that same decade just to alleviate some of the worst affects of global climate change.

Having people, on the individual level, change their lifestyles is all well and good, but its still just a blip on the radar screen. What is needed, at least in the United States, is a reorganizing of civic planning, urban development, and replacing the road based infrastructure in this country to something more energy efficient.

The fact of the matter is that we are doomed, its human nature, I think, to just do the most destructive thing possible, and fuck it up for the responsible individuals. We already burn through over 10 MILLION barrels of oil a day in this country, and millions of tons of coal and millions of cubic feet in natural gas, all in a day, and that's just in the United States. Assuming Peak Oil doesn't bite us in the ass in the meantime, we aren't going to lower our consumption rates by no more than a percentage point or so a year.

The responsible minority isn't the problem, its the gluttonous majority, I'm actually hoping for a peak oil disruption of some sort, hopefully in the near future, to kick our society in the ass. It needs a good ass kicking, maybe then the majority will actually think seriously as to how fucked up our "way of life" is.