Wednesday, December 16, 2015

The Paris Climate Talks Were Never Going To Solve Anything

Paris was a political exercise.  And nothing more.  Nothing those governments would actually agree to do was going to help.  At all.  There are far too many people chasing too few resources generating way too much pollution.  The technology does not exist to allow the next two billion people in the developing world to consume and pollute at the level of the last two billion people without turning the planet into a boiling toxic hellhole.  And there's no way the developed nations would agree to take any action which would threaten energy sector short-term profits.  It's fine to trim along the edges in order to make it look good as they did in Paris, but the prospect of unrestrained growth is what will doom any hope of controlling climate change effectively.  At best, the wealthiest nations will deal as best they can to mitigate the suffering of the wealthiest citizens while the rest of the world is effectively helpless.  The upside is that the loss of habitable land and the explosion of deadly new diseases will do a great deal to lower the human population. 

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