“So, Dan – you still happy with your President?”
“I am, actually. I don’t agree with everything he’s done, but overall he’s been what I wanted him to be.”
“You mean ‘hope’ and ‘change’ and all that? From where I’m standing he hasn’t really delivered on those things.”
“No. Those are campaign slogans. Ads. Taglines. I never expected him to be anything more than a smart and savvy politician. But one who’s engaged with the world and thinks about things, unlike his predecessor who surrounded himself with like-minded people and shut down dissent. One reason I voted for Obama was because I trusted him to think deeply about the world’s complex problems. I think that’s a huge part of the president’s job, and I think he does that.”
“Takes a lot more than thinking to run the country well, doesn’t it? Your Democrats are so good at thinking that they can’t agree on anything. If the Republicans had your kind of majority they’d’ve gotten a lot more done.”
“You’re right that the Dems aren’t very good at getting things done, and that’s frustrating. Like instead of coming out hard for repealing Bush’s tax cuts they hold back because they’re scared of the Tea Party. Ridiculous. Still though I’d rather be part of the party that disagrees with itself. The repubs are this monolithic mass. They’re not allowed to think for themselves. I don’t want any part of that.
“We can probably each agree that Congress stinks no matter which party you’re with. But why does every Democrat solution involve spending us to death? You know your generation and your kids will be the ones paying that back.”
“We’ll be paying for your wars too. How come that never comes up when you talk about spending? Spending and deficits are problems, sure, but it’s how we’re spending that concerns me. Now I like that the Dems at least have environmental concerns on their radar (unlike your boys, who don’t), but we need to be doing much more.”
“More spending, you mean. The solution to environmental problems is always more government. And I get the feeling some environmentalists care more about trees and owls than they do about people.”
“Caring about the environment is caring about people. I’m not sure when conservatives started treating environmentalism like a socialist plot, but it’s completely wrongheaded and irresponsible. The vast majority of climate scientists agree that the world is getting warmer, that warming could have highly disruptive to catastrophic consequences, and that we can still change that if we handle ourselves right. But your party has already made up its mind.”
“You can’t go spending billions and making major changes that’ll effect the economy without being certain you’re doing the right thing.”
“But ‘certainty’ doesn’t exist in science! Scientists aren’t certain because scientists are trained and paid to doubt. Eachother, themselves . . . The problem with your view of climate change is that you’re applying criteria that won’t work. And by the time we’re certain it’s real it’ll be too late. Look, maybe you know this stuff already, but indulge me. The earth’s heating up because there’s more carbon in the atmosphere than at any time since the atmosphere has been habitable by humans. That’s agreed upon; it’s not controversial. None of the stuff I’m going to say here is controversial; it’s all as settled as anything can be. Climate scientists can look at ice core samples – with little air bubbles trapped from eons ago – and see that for at least 10,000 years there’s been roughly the same about of carbon in the atmosphere. Now, because of the industrial revolution when we’re taking carbon out of the ground and putting it into the air in massive amounts, there’s about 40% more floating around us, and that number’s only going up, and will continue to go up as we rely on fossil fuels. Not controversial. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, which means it traps the suns heat instead of allowing the earth to reflect it back away from itself. More CO2 , the earth heats up, which makes all kinds of crazy, unpredictable things happen. Ice melts, oceans rise, weather changes. Bugs don’t die off in winter because it doesn’t get cold enough so they eat up crops. Hurricanes get stronger and more frequent because they get their power from the warmth of the water. Coral reefs die, and they provide habitats for millions of ocean animals, so fishing industries suffer. None of this is controversial. If we start relying on other forms of power, we can help keep this from happening.”
“So we just stop using so much oil and gas and that’ll solve all our problems.”
“Of course not. But it’ll help solve a lot of them. If you don’t want to talk ‘environmentalism,’ then let’s talk politics. Most of the world’s oil is controlled by governments that are backward, tyrannical and generally awful. Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran – these leaders are bad news. And while we fight against them and/or people like them in Iraq and Afghanistan with one hand, we shell out the big bucks to them with the other. Incredible. But what else can we do? We’re hooked, and they know it.”
“And there’s a ton of it in Alaska and under the Rockies, but you don’t want to dig it out. That doesn’t add up.”
“That’s a temporary, ugly solution. We need a fundamental change, not a stop-gap measure.”
No comments:
Post a Comment