Climate Change and the People Who Want To Minimize Further Damage: An Extremely Simple Situation

courtesy: Blendspace.com

A long-time skeptic of the whole climate change / renewable energy enterprise writes:  The actual science behind “climate change” has become lost in a cacophony of self-interest and distortion. A vast industry has emerged, mostly funded by taxpayers, to create a new social movement, with semi-religious overtones. Rationality, has largely disappeared, replaced by a cornucopia of public finding for a new environmental industry based on an illusion.

I respond:

I believe you’re over-analyzing the situation here.  Yes, I’m one of many who is concerned that human civilization is in the process of causing an unimaginable amount of harm to the environment via greenhouse gas emissions.  And yes, we’re also concerned about the many other forms of unsustainable behavior we see around us. But it’s not true the science has been replaced by a “cacophonous … cornucopia of self-interest…distortion … and illusion.”

Again, don’t over-think this very basic simplicity: a) the science that has us concerned about climate change is very real, and nearly universally supported by the people who study the subject, and b) as a consequence, lots of people want to take action to avoid catastrophe; it’s really not much more complicated than that. Will there be people who profit from the burgeoning suite of clean industries? Absolutely. And it’s a damn good thing, or it wouldn’t happen.

In fact, I propose to be one of them, as I mentioned here about my own investment strategies where I note: “(I’m buying stock in) companies that have good positions in the things that are bound to win ‘as time goes by’: energy efficiency, smart grid, climate change mitigation, alt fuel cars, alt energy, sustainable agriculture, and solutions to water scarcity. There’s really no way that this stuff won’t work on a planet of finite size and resources.”