21st March 2007, 5:12 PM
That documentary got dissected on the Something Awful boards, afaik the science is bunk.
What's unfortunate about global warming is that many environmentalists have a socialist bent, and tend to equate pollution with capitalism. They have trouble dissociating "punishing the evil industrialists" and reducing pollution, and therefore their solutions involve choking out the economy in various ways.
But capitalism isn't responsible for pollution - technology is. The USSR, the great communist experiment, was probably the worst polluter in the history of the earth: see the Aral sea, nuclear tests in Kazakhstan, coal-powered heavy industry, the Caspian tiger, etc. Since technology is the culprit, that's what we should address, and in some ways we are. Widespread nuclear power and ethanol-powered cars are just around the corner.
The only thing restricting our economy (with carbon points and whatnot) would do is give China more of an upper hand on us. If we transition directly to a non-polluting economy, we'll leave them in the dust.
What's unfortunate about global warming is that many environmentalists have a socialist bent, and tend to equate pollution with capitalism. They have trouble dissociating "punishing the evil industrialists" and reducing pollution, and therefore their solutions involve choking out the economy in various ways.
But capitalism isn't responsible for pollution - technology is. The USSR, the great communist experiment, was probably the worst polluter in the history of the earth: see the Aral sea, nuclear tests in Kazakhstan, coal-powered heavy industry, the Caspian tiger, etc. Since technology is the culprit, that's what we should address, and in some ways we are. Widespread nuclear power and ethanol-powered cars are just around the corner.
The only thing restricting our economy (with carbon points and whatnot) would do is give China more of an upper hand on us. If we transition directly to a non-polluting economy, we'll leave them in the dust.