TalkClimateChange

I am going to get a little introspective about my life and the contradictions I face everyday in my work, my lifestyle, and my opinions in an effort to see if there is a balance that can be reached in regards to adapting to a changing world.

I do this in the hope that by reaching some sort of balance through understanding, I can put the climate debate into context and perhaps allow all opinions (red, green and blue) to have a better appreciation of the problems that our society faces.

I hope by looking at the issues and using my basic morality I can put some things into a better frame of reference for everyone, and it is my hope that it can serve to de-polarize the debate a little. Pretty darn ambitious of me I know, but I still have some optimistic genes left, although I feel them dwindling with each new piece of information I digest.

So come with me and see if we cannot get some sense of balance that can be applied to us all.

The Green in Me

I live, by any-one’s yardstick, a fairly green lifestyle and have done so for many years. Unlike the younger generation, say twenty years my junior, my greenness was a result of growing up in rural Canada and having an appreciation of nature, learning the value of a dollar, and constant reinforcement through common sense lessons learned from my parents.

Most lifestyle changes advocated these days are not new, at least the ones on the mainstream list, and I have been doing them most of my life; Conserving water and electricity, recycling and re-using disposable containers - my mother used to yell at us all the time about leaving lights on, the doors open, standing for long periods looking into the fridge, taking long hot showers and opening windows in the winter. These lessons were fundamentally economic, not environmental, but translate into the new lifestyle regime as green actions.

I do not litter, I never leave anything in the forest when camping or hiking and I walk and use public transit for work. I have to keep getting my car jump-started because I end up draining the battery by not driving often enough. I think this gives me some green credentials, and I can understand some of the outrage that environmentalists feel when looking at our unnecessary impacts on the planet.

The Blue in Me

For many years I have been of the belief that we as a society have to become more aware that we consume many finite resources, and that management of these resources is required to extend their availability. That is why I believe that fuel economy standards should be raised faster and should not have remained static during the past two decades. Research on extending the current transportation system’s efficiency and life-span together with development of new energy technologies is a constant responsibility.

Whilst I get part of the win-win scenario that is thrown out into the debate all the time, I also realize that there is a cycle to the implementation of new technologies. From this perspective I appreciate the arguments for renewable energy, yet these arguments are rarely based on the reality of the current state of the technology.

When I hear statements that start with: If everyone had a <insert technology> then we could reduce CO2 by <insert some percentage>, I immediately look at the solution and what it would mean to actually implement it. There are many things said by environmentalists and lifestyle advocates that are frankly ridiculous, many being so regional that they do not warrant serious consideration on the global stage. Still, I firmly believe there are some universal changes that can make an impact on our use of resources and that these are worthy of exploration.

My final concern is the shift in focus between things that are happening to things that might happen - this is a worrying trend, potentially leading to real and immediate problems getting even further out of control. For a good example of this, look no further than the World Food Programme and the rising cost of food towards dangerous levels.

The Red in Me

The red side of my tri-personality is the most dominate and sarcastic. It concerns the issue of AGW (recently renamed to Climate Change). This is the issue that makes me determined to get my thoughts out into the world, and is the reason I write here and on my own web site.

This issue stems from my conservative free-market side - the side that looks at what is happening and makes me shake my head and bang it on the desk in frustration. I look at the solutions being implemented and think to myself “Is this the best we’ve got?”

Now, do not get me wrong, every proposed solution to anything in all of history has certain challenges to overcome, but please understand that there is a stark difference here in the fact that most other new advancements had a maturation and acceptance period to work through the issues before being widely implemented. Today we are rushing blindly forward under the constant whips of our new environmental overlords to implement anything so as to not appear to be impotent in the face of a global catastrophe that does not exist.

That’s correct, it does not exist - the minuscule change in global temperature is insignificant to the planet and to the climate in particular. To even think that we can somehow pick our climate and control the patterns of storms and floods by regulating a gas created or consumed by every living thing on the planet is so amazingly arrogant that it defies explanation.

Problems caused by the lack of planning and real assessment of the impacts of mandated mitigation strategies with immature or unfeasible technologies are starting to appear now, not in 25-100 years like the supposed effects of climate change. So now we have an immediate and real problem to deal with. I have talked about the effects of this type of action for almost seven years now, I knew many of the challenges that would arise and voiced them, but to see them coming true and to know that I was simply out voiced by professional activists makes me worried for the future. I am firmly against acting on the grounds of Climate Change as the primary motivation because it is not relevant to the current state of humanity.

Reconciliation

So I will continue to live a lifestyle without excess and with some measure of respect for the environment, and I will promote the need for research into anything that can better help us manage our resources as the bulk of society catches up in the development game, and I will continue I will call them as I see them in regards to mandated and pressured implementations and the effects that they will have.

I think that we can all benefit from taking a step back and really looking at the issues objectively. That means using the common sense lessons on consumption whilst adding in the need to forecast and manage resources and replace and improve inefficient technologies. To this we can add the need to finally start listening to people who may not agree with our own agenda, but who may have real input to consider. As an act of civility we can also subtract a good portion of the frustration and anger felt on all sides.

I believe that in the end we can all come out with a responsible and measured approach which is not driven by blind obsession - an approach which considers motivations on all sides, which prevents dismissal of alternate points of views based on ideology, and which avoids emotional reactions due to some sort of emergency time-scale.

If I can do this internally then I think that we can we do this across the spectrum of colours and finally arrive at a place where everyone can work together. So I ask you: by blending the red, green and blue in and between all of us, can we actually find the promised land of common purpose?