Seems like common sense right? I guess we see the power money in politics... $1M to a politician is profitable for both sides =/



Also, in regards to the whole not using fossil fuels thing - our society is built upon them. It is impossible for anyone to live any life other than as a beggar without using fossil fuels (and then you still benefit from them). The Amish do a pretty good job of it, but unless you already have farm land you're sort of out of luck. The sensible thing if you want to get off of fossil fuels is to encourage our society to move greener since going homeless won't help change anything... Obviously it is stupid to suggest we could or should drop fossil fuels overnight. Steady, incremental, progressive change is the approach necessary for handling global warming.

Yes they would... by bringing green power more in-line economically with fossil fuels will definitely help the transition to energy sources that put less carbon into the atmosphere... Do you not know how global warming works? I would have assumed you did... we put gases into the atmosphere that help to trap solar radiation which increases the heat in the atmosphere. Increased heat means higher temperature. If we keep adding things that trap more heat, we are exacerbating the problem. If we reduce how much we're adding, we're making the situation better.

Are you saying that won't solve the damage we've already done? Well that is true. At this point we need to stop making the problem worse though while we figure out the best way to actually clean things up...

I think most people want to be greener where possible but in some areas we are not quite ready for it. Fossil fuels are finite in quantity so at some point we will have no choice. As technology improves and the markets demand it we will get more renewable energy.

Countries ranked in order from most to least for pollution in 2011:

1. China
2. United States
3. Russia
4. India
5. Japan
6. Germany
7. Canada
8. United Kingdom
9. South Korea
10. Iran

Being the 2nd biggest in the world it would be important for us to work on our pollution but if you want to change anything you've got to also work on the others at the top of the list to make any kind of meaningful impact. What is likely to happen is that we put heavy regulation on things that are far more expensive in these days and make industry more expensive and thus giving more companies a reason not to produce in America and go somewhere else, like china.

The markets don't look out for the people. If we let the markets dictate our environmental policies we're in big trouble.

The only fossil fuel we are in any danger of running out of in the near future is oil. Natural gas and coal are very abundant.

Companies already outsource all of our labor to China... we aren't going to lose anymore industry to China than we already have. What we need are heavier tariffs or to require to be a US company that you have to employee a certain percentage of US citizens - something along those lines. We can protect our jobs without selling environmental protection.

I don't believe that to be completely true Detmer, we still have lots of industry in America and we could lose more. If say we make it way more expensive and other countries such as China do not then we don't really help global warming from a world wide perspective (if there are still other top polluters) and we risk losing more to them or some other country that wouldn't have the same restrictions at this point in time.

All I'm saying is if you want to really have an impact you're going to have to also get the rest of the world on board too otherwise your attempts may be for not. There are no easy answers.

I agree that you need to get the other top countries on board. No argument there. Sometimes you have to lead by example though. Something that has pissed a lot of other countries off is that they have agreed to try to make a difference whereas the US has disregarded previous international efforts to address this problem.

Some related articles:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/.../2012/02/120215143116.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/.../2012/01/120112193430.htm

Hah!

We're not close to running out, HOWEVER, we're probably AT peak oil; that means there will be, on average, less oil produced each year henceforth; natural gas is not a 1:1 replacement either; we're in for an oil shock methinks - this recession is probably the first of many.

http://physics.ucsd.edu/.../11/peak-oil-perspective/


We're nearing halfway through burning all the hydrocarbons stored in the ground, so this will be a moot argument in about 150 years.

I didn't want to get into such details, but realistically a reservoir is only 1/3 depleted before it stops being produced. It's not that we'd run out of technically recoverable reserves. Clearly we will never get to the point of not having any oil left - its just we'll get to the point where we run out to be able to use it as a major fuel source. (and that link didn't load for me to see what points in particular are there)

Well, you never know, oil is an insanely useful resource, I wouldn't be surprised if we get darn near all of it out before the end.

But peak production is probably about now.