Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Environmentalism

Ed Glaeser of Harvard University explains some of the contradictions in the environmental movement and why "Think globally, act locally" might not be the best approach.

1 comment:

Josh said...

Ed Glaeser demonstrates the harm in the political correct but factually ignorant ideology that passes as environmentalism these days.

Glaeser takes as fact that Carbon output or a project's Carbon Footprint defines how green a project is. I would disagree.

The point is not that I disagree with the assertion that carbon output is a measure of how green something is. Unlike Global Warming alarmists I'm open to a discussion about potential dangers from CO2 emissions. But Glaser argues as if this is fact. It is not.

Human impact (if there is any) on climate change is poorly understood at best. At worst - barring completely unsubstantiated claims of runaway feedback mechanisms - a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere would yield a warming of 1 - 1.5 degree C. It takes blind faith of a religious nature to look around at the clearly visible impacts of changes in land use (farming, urbanization) or contamination of drinking water and conclude that, based on computer models, we must ignore that for the greater good.