One of the most consistent arguments against dealing with climate change that comes from the Industrial Right is that we just can’t afford to take action. A reader of the Sandusky Register, for example, recently complained,
“I believe that climate change is real, but I also believe that people’s livlihoods come first, and I believe that the American gov’t should put the American people’s interests ahead of Norway and Greenland’s. We can’t afford cap and trade right now.”
I’ve got some sympathy for people who are finding it difficult to make ends meet right now, but what’s being discussed about when it comes to action on climate change isn’t an individual bill that comes to everyone’s doorstep, but a nationwide system of adjustments that will require some tightening of the slack in our economy on a large scale.
Is there really slack in the U.S. economy during these times of recession? This photograph says it all for me:
If our economy can afford to create energy-draining monstrosities such as dump trucks covered in Christmas lights, then I think our economy can afford to deal with climate change.
It’s a cement truck…and the Teamsters would more than likely not agree with you on Cap and Trade….and they sure as hell don’t like your way of a Green economy….it would kill interstate trucking….
Sorry, I guess I couldn’t make out the precise shape given the glare from all those light bulbs shining on without resulting in any pollution at all, powered with energy coming from an electric plant fueled by happy little bunny rabbits that make turbines go around by jumping up and down with excitement as they listen to fun remixes of old Donnie and Marie Osmond Christmas carols. My mistake.
…whatever keeps the lights on and gas in the tank…..
Yep, typical short-sighted thinkin’ from the “good ol’ boys”. “What di you expect? They’re ‘the salt of the earth’, the ‘common clay’ . . . you know, morons!” (adapted from Blazing Saddles).
Right…and you keep the lights on…how? Not Using the coal burning power plant down the road…using old fry oil in your gas tank? Nope, didn’t think so…welcome to us morons Tommy….
Is a concrete company joining a holiday celebration and therefore running a generator for all of a couple hours so significant a factor? Compare that energy usage to, say, hospital equipment needed to keep an obese American alive when he needs a quadruple bypass.
I’m surprised at you, Greenie.
You of all people should know that the biggest, most pressing issue isn’t parades. It’s overpopulation.
Get the planet’s population to a sustainable level, and all the other problems magically disappear . . . but nobody wants to touch that, it means we’d have to restrain our zygotes!
Tomas – you’re correct in that i’m (by default) living unsustainably (like most of us) and am powerless to change anything (except the way i live, which i’ve been doing out of necessity, for the past 10 years). No matter who i elect, the outcome is the same status quo where the big-money “connected” people get all the perqs and the vast majority of us are the LOSERS who get to pay for it all, have no say in ANYTHING the now secret government does, and in the end we’ll become extinct by our own hand (the very definition of stupidity – doing the same things over and over, hoping for a different outcome).