Unfortunately, no one is addressing the fundamental issue. It does not matter a whit whether man is physically having an effect on the climate or not. What matters is whether or not it is metaphysically proper for man to have an effect on the environment.
Today it has been accepted as political fact that if man is having an effect on the earth, that that is a bad thing. But the Laws of Thermodynamics tell us that it is utterly inescapable that every living creature has an effect on its environment. Bears sh*t in the woods. But that is a good thing, whereas our sh*t is a bad thing? Hmmm…
So man’s existence on earth is only completely acceptable if man has no effect on the environment? The Laws of Thermodynamics tell us that THAT happy state can only be achieved if there are no people on earth. None. Zero.
The underlying truth is that the climate debate overshadows the hatred that some folks have for homo sapiens sapiens. I am not among them. I like man qua man. I don’t like my upstream neighbor pouring pollutants into my river, but I recognize that some level of impact on the environment is simply inescapable. I like my fellow man enough to put up with that. It’s the price we all pay for living with each other.
So it comes down to figuring out what’s reasonable. And holding the progress of modern technological civilization hostage to the unreasonable is not my idea of a civilized way to live with each other.
Yea, it’s inescapable that man’s existence on this planet causes changes in the environment, and there are WAY too many of us on this rock. But our life is GOOD, and we are the measure of that goodness. To choose any other measure is to disvalue man, and to open the gates to the unreasonable suggestion that we ought to put ourselves in chains to the fiction that together we can beat the Laws of Thermodynamics. That’s a loser’s proposition.
