The just released United Nations Panel’s Warning on Climate Change is long on conclusions and short on workable solutions. It is a fact that the polar caps are melting and sea level is rising, every other conclusion, however, is like the weather; it changes. There is good evidence that fossil fuel burns generated by human industrial activity has increased the CO2 in the atmosphere to over 400 ppm, a level never recorded in human history but most certainly experienced within Earth’s history. So let’s do a mind experiment where all fossil fuel burning is stopped by some sort of elitist dictum, and let’s not ask how; just that it is. Due to inertia the CO2 build up would continue albeit at slower rate until it stops and reverses, possible within a generation. To reach our supposedly optimum pre-industrial nirvana of a sub 300 ppm would take two centuries. In the meantime humanity has a two thirds die off so that we may get the polar caps to freeze up again.
Concern voiced by those in the Charity Agribusiness that the world’s food supply is at risk may be misdirected. The fossil fuel burn is the power source that creates the food that we consume and its increased use makes the world food production greater every year. Curiously vegetation grows faster and with less water consumption in a higher CO2 environment. Certainly there will be areas that will be stressed to desert like level, but the report gives no regard to areas that once were deserts converting to lush farmland. A do no harm stance is the only logical one for food groups to demand of U N Interventionists.
One harm to world’s starving poor that needs alleviating is eliminating the insane ethanol fuel requirement in our nation’s gasoline supply. Every ear of corn sent to the fermenting tank for ethanol production is one less in the world’s food supply. Our ethanol policy robs the poor to feed our cars. Not only is this subsidy morally objectionable but a rigorous analysis of the energy costs of the various transformations makes it a net loser, more energy is consumed than provided.
Practical adaptations to the changing environment will come from our interconnectedness where working in our self interest we create a greater good. As long as the decision making is small and Libertarian versus giant Authoritarian edicts from on high, it will work out.
