Climate Change Skepticism

I have long been something of a climate change skeptic -- not a skeptic, really, and not a denier, but perhaps I approach the subject with simple restraint -- I think it's too early to know whether or not us humans are altering climate.

However -- when I think about CFCs forty years ago and how there's [not much] denying that they caused ozone depletion, and then I think about how a million square mile hole above the Antarctic was created by the propellants in some underarm spray cans and hair mousse, well, it doesn't seem so far fetched that a few thousand coal fired power plants and seven hundred million cars might, just might, be cause for warming.

The way I see it, we are going to crack apart every last hydrocarbon chain for its stored energy regardless, because that's what we're biologically built to do -- consume natural resources. We will extract it all until there's nothing left, global warming be damned. So really, I have no interest in climate change, because I know the moment even the most stalwart environmentalists go without their coal fired electricity for one snowy New England winter night, global warming will magically cease to register as a problem.

You can see it today, where environmental legislation developed before our little economic slowdown is now being deferred. No need to bother with implementing California's diesel truck emission rules because the poor economy reduced emissions more than the new law would ever do. There are fewer cement trucks pouring new housal unit slabs these days.

What I do like about global warming is that it might act as a catalyst for creating better places to live. Perhaps we'll realize the stupidity of building Stocktonian housal units for commuters to Oakland eighty miles distant as gasoline approaches five bucks a gallon, when gasoline availability begins its inexorable global decline. While resource scarcity may not have anything to do with warming, do you think for a minute that an IT professional who commutes to the Bay Area from Tracy every day gives a damn about rising tides and the displacement of millions in Bangladesh? No way. If it raised the price of his imported Bengali collared shirts a dollar or two, ho-hum.

I say bring on cap and trade. Bring on other measures to reduce CO2. While I will not bother with the macro-climate, I will bother with the changes such legislation would bring to my bicycle riding on Franklin Boulevard. If climate change legislation reduces the volume of particulate matter I ingest while bicycling alongside diesel powered tractor trailers, well, count me in as your #1 supporter.