James Lovelock says, "The world is doomed, so let's party, dude."
On one hand, renowned climate expert James Lovelock thinks the global warming will destroy the world. On the other hand, he thinks all the political solutions are a scam.
The Guardian UK reports Lovelock’s heresy:
He dismisses eco ideas briskly, one by one. “Carbon offsetting? I wouldn’t dream of it. It’s just a joke. To pay money to plant trees, to think you’re offsetting the carbon? You’re probably making matters worse. You’re far better off giving to the charity Cool Earth, which gives the money to the native peoples to not take down their forests.”
Do he and his wife try to limit the number of flights they take? “No we don’t. Because we can’t.” And recycling, he adds, is “almost certainly a waste of time and energy”, while having a “green lifestyle” amounts to little more than “ostentatious grand gestures”. He distrusts the notion of ethical consumption. “Because always, in the end, it turns out to be a scam … or if it wasn’t one in the beginning, it becomes one.”
The Guardian continues:
You’re never going to get enough energy from wind to run a society such as ours,” he says. “Windmills! Oh no. No way of doing it. You can cover the whole country with the blasted things, millions of them. Waste of time.”
So given all this, what would Lovelock do now? “Enjoy life while you can. Because if you’re lucky it’s going to be 20 years before it hits the fan.”
A round of applause for James Lovelock for his honesty. Anyone Al Gore disagrees with is alright with us.
Source: Guardian UK
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
OK – How do we get the great unwashed masses of dupes in this world re-educated? They have been taught for years that to be moral is to limit certain activities, recycle everything, and now pay for offsets so fat Al, can become morbidly obese and just finally go away. Sheepeople need a new direction with new leadership that is any color but green! Thanks for the ammo, IHTM. I collect this stuff and spread it around at work. Just one step but we have to start somewhere.
I actually really enjoyed his GAIA book. I used parts of it for my college thesis. [wow I was really indoctrinated back then!]
It seems both he and I have changed…well, I have, maybe he felt the same all along, but Im glad he is speaking out now.
The only part I doubt is the 20 years to poop/fan interaction. The earth has a wonderful way of stabilizing its climate for the maximization of life. This is one of the main points of his famous book.
Perhaps Lovelock can predict solar output, because that is probably the only thing capable of realistically causing us serious peril. Even we as humans would be hard pressed to change the climate signifigantly. Perhaps the worst we could do would be to nuke every known volcano and get them belching ash into the atmosphere. Even then we might only cause a cooling period for a few decades.
But what do I know, I used to think Lovelock was brilliant.
I read a book about a monkey named Lovelock.
There’s no point to this story, but the book was pretty good.
In the end if we go too far – Mother earth will have Everything to say about it. Hey, millions of us die, maybe we learn a lesson, but dismantling our own civilization and still dying in a cold, lightless world without heat and electricity in our homes is not a choice I want to make. As I have said before the medieval period was not fun! I think Lovelock is right – I’ve been recycling, etc for decades and I have often considered the possibility it is a waste of time.
What would be terribly ironic is that we find out Earth isn’t as vulnerable as we think and we just continue on as we have been. No problem. 100 years from now there are hundreds of books about the great climate hoax and how it nearly destroyed our technological advancement! Here are a few things to think about:
Modern technological civilization is a VERY new thing. My grandparents lived in a totally different world. All of our grandparents did – having never been tried before (unless you believe in Atlantis!) we don’t know what the limits of advancement is – no history can help us. This is first time our species had gotten past steam and horses. We are making history. No extraterrestrial knowledge,either. Wish those aliens would stop buzzing us, land and tell us how they got past their version of this era, I really do.
Even I, humble housewife I am, know you can’t run an advanced civilization on solar and wind power. A house, maybe out in the country (and turn the lights off and go to bed at sun down.) My big hope is fusion but no one is even trying to figure that out. We should be running our cities with fission but the wacko environmentalists refuse to let us try.
There is one very sour note I want to sound here and You are not going to like it on little bit! …. All jokes about little green men and flying saucers aside. Why has no other civilization gotten a’hold of us in the past century? Could it be that getting past this energy/pollution/global climate question destroys or stops advancing civilizations in their tracks? Civilizations either lose their nerve, entirely like we are doing or something bad does happen and they slide right back into the medieval( their version) mire? And therefore, interstellar civilizations are rare – that is, nearly hardly ever evolve?
Darn, darn, darn – and I wanted my own star ship next lifetime!