[Mgs] coming carbon tax

[Max Heim]

Only powerful enough to significantly alter the ecosystem, climate, flora
and fauna of the majority of the earth's land surface in the last 10,000
years. North Africa, the entire Middle East, all of Europe, Asia Minor, the
Indian subcontinent, most of China, Australia...  It would be much briefer,
though more difficult, to list the unaffected regions (Antarctica? No, it's
melting... Borneo? It's being deforested, as is the Amazon).

You don't think humans are powerful agents of climate change? Hell, termites
are powerful agents affecting climate. The difference is, there are roughly
the same number of termites today as there were 10,000 years ago, and they
haven't advanced their technology any in the interval. Meanwhile, the number
of humans has increased enormously, and they have leveraged their effect
astronomically. A stone age hunter's carbon contribution was limited to
farts. Compare that to what it takes to support one first-world middle class
citizen in the lifestyle to which he or she is accustomed. It takes 32 times
more resources to support one American than one contemporary Kenyan, and
even the Kenyan subsistence farmer is emitting much more carbon than the
neolithic hunter (he has goats, cows, mayber even a kerosene lamp or a
generator, and he burns his fields).

The simple fact is, you can't project an extractive economy indefinitely
into the future, and neither can you treat the atmosphere as a dumping
ground indefinitely. It's a closed system, however much you may wish it to
be otherwise. And no amount of engineering is going to be able to get over
that fact. You might not find it convenient or comfortable to admit it at
present, but you will be forced to acknowledge reality eventually, whether
you like it or not.

You are correct in believing that man is not powerful enough to "destroy"
the earth. But he is certainly capable of making it into an increasingly
unpleasant and unproductive environment, which may even render him extinct.
At which point the earth moves on without us, as it did without the
dinosaurs.

Personally, I don't find 'divine intervention' a very plausible solution.


--

Max Heim
'66 MGB GHN3L76149
If you're near Mountain View, CA,
it's the primer red one with chrome wires


on 10/20/08 10:03 AM, rolindsay at yahoo.com at rolindsay at yahoo.com wrote:

> Personally, I 
> believe in iron, oil and engineering, and that man is just not that important
> - and he is certainly not that powerful! :-)
> 
> Rick