What If They Are Wrong?

This article has a concept that I have been thinking about for a while, ever since I wrote up a draft of a response to a friend on Facebook, who posted about the "danger" of a carbon tax. The concept is to think about what the ramifications are of being wrong about the climate "debate" (there really isn't any serious debate about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere or even warming, but whether we are responsible and whether we should do anything about it) on either side. If we act on the concern over climate change by implementing a carbon tax to help drive sustainable energy innovation, and we are wrong, then we have perhaps put a bit of a brake on economic development. But maybe not even that, because perhaps the energy innovations create a self-sustaining economic benefit of their own, both in technology, and the fact that pollution of any kind is waste, and waste is inefficient economically. So the ramifications of the climate concern crowd being wrong are relatively minor.
But if we follow the plans of the climate deniers (mostly funded and influenced by the carbon industry and a short term focus on their own economics), and don't do anything about the rising amount of carbon and other global warming gases in the atmosphere, and they are wrong, then we have a disaster of unbelievable proportions on our hands. There is of course a debate about how bad it will be (some contend it will only be a couple of degrees and we can "adapt"), but that really amounts to an uncontrolled experiment with the planet. And again, if those saying warming will "only" be a few degrees, and the impacts won't be that bad are wrong, then we have possibly doomed our civilization.

I also saw a concept that I absolutely love, which I thought was in a Thomas Friedman op-ed as well, but I cannot find it. It is that people who are climate deniers of any kind should be required to write a letter to their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, telling them that they stood in the way of trying to fix this problem. Might serve as a reality check for some, but there is probably no fixing people who are inherently selfish and short-sighted.

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