Guys What is your take on the climate change deal situation

[LogsBozy]

I admire this guy for taking matters in to his one hands and wasting no time. Just wanted to find out general opinion :) what do you guys think.
Copenhagen, Denmark - Delegates at the U.N. Climate Change Conference are "running short on time" to reach agreement on a deal, U.S. President Barack Obama told them Friday.
"There is no time to waste," he said. "Now I believe it's the time for the nations and the people of the world to come behind a common purpose. We are ready to get this done today, but there has to be movement on all sides."

[Mercy]

My opinion is it has nothing to do with food. *moved*

It has less to do with solutions and is pure, grandstanding rhetoric. Without plausible solutions, all the assertions of "something needs to be done now" are merely preening and soundbites for the evening news.

-m.

[J.J. Maxx]

Climate Change, aka 'Global Warming' is just more of the same. Take money from rich countries and funnel it to poor countries. Wealth sharing, worldwide socialism, blah blah blah.

[Pineconn]

It's complete garbage... all political. It's pathetic.

[rock_nog]

It's my personal opinion that global warming is real, but that there aren't any real solutions at this time, and so I'm not entirely certain what we're meant to accomplish. I mean, there's not a whole hell of a lot we can do so long as we're dependent upon fossil fuels - all of the talks going on now ultimately result in mere drops in the bucket, so what are we wasting so much money for if these initiatives don't actually do anything?

What really interests me, incidentally, is how rarely I hear anyone take this position. The two major camps seem to be, "It's real, but don't worry, we can fix it," and "Don't worry, it's not real." Either way, it seems most people's opinions seem to be based on the comforting notion that whatever's going on, we can handle it.

[AtmaWeapon]

I believe that human-caused global warming is a possibility that is weakly supported by data. However, taking efforts to reduce pollution and energy use are definitely a good idea even if it turns out it's not our fault; at least we'll have less pollution.

However, the issue of climate change and energy conservation is little more than a dance between politicians and industries. The media stirs up voters and makes them care about climate change no matter the facts; voters respond by demanding action from companies and politicians. So politicians band together and have talks and agree they must all work together to make sure something is done. Then next year, they agree again: something must be done. In all this talk about something getting done there's very little actually getting done.

In the meantime, corporate entities working on green technologies are poised to profit off of the misguided "green is better" attitude. My electric bill is about to get higher because our electric company is forcing everyone to use power from wind farms, which costs more money because I guess they had to buy the turbines from China or something. Hybrid cars cost extra money because mining all of those toxic chemicals for the batteries costs money, and so does shipping all those heavy batteries from place to place. I'm sure I'm just ignorant of other factors (or using hyperbole to hide them), but green ain't cheap.

If you don't think it's motivated by who can make money off of it, tell me where my government subsidies for LED light bulbs (or even CF with its toxic chemicals and expensive disposal) are? CF bulbs and LED bulbs use significantly less energy; I've seen the government state that LED traffic lights use 90% less energy. The government sure subsidizes purchasing hybrid cars (the cash for clunkers program provided incentive and I believe there are occasional other tax breaks.) Do we really believe that the few tens of thousands of people switching to hybrid cars and thus reducing maybe 10% or 30% of their gas use makes as large an impact as if a few million people used 90% less electricity to light their homes? Interesting how the dying automotive industry gets a subsidy but the smaller and less powerful industries that could actually make a difference are on their own.

It doesn't even matter what these global summits decide. China's likely outputting more pollution than anyone else right now. They're developing a strong industrial complex (something we made expensive in the US due to pollution controls) and growing very powerful as a nation due to their wealth. Do you think the citizens of China would react well to being told by the rest of the world they should arrest their development and return to their previous jobs? It'd be viewed as the world trying to suppress them. What nation could possibly enforce controls anyway? We might decide to put trade embargos on them, but be prepared to pay more for your clothes, computers, toys, TVs, furniture, and many other things. (http://www.mint.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/us-chinatradecomparison-2.jpg) China makes most of our stuff. China practically funded the bailouts. We owe them a lot of money, and in trade they send us twice as much stuff as we send them. Do you think they really need our soybeans so bad they'd respond? What about semiconductors and plastics? These are things the US has expertise in creating, but we're not the sole supplier to the world. Cutting off our trade relations with China would just encourage them to learn to develop the technology on our own, and once they learned that then with their industrial complex they'd quickly overtake us as the world's supplier. Even if that didn't happen, we still owe them a lot of money. They could decide to ask for some of it back, and we'd either have to say "no" or print more money and devalue our dollar. Either way we lose. Devaluing the dollar means rapid inflation; the middle class would be penniless and if you think *this* recession was bad you'd soon forget it. Go look at Zimbabwe's condition to get an idea of what rapid devaluation does. If we didn't go that route, we'd tell them "we won't pay you back" and they would likely be able to convince the U.N. that they are justified in attempting to seize territory in order to repay debt. Do we really want a war with China? We have no power over China.

The rest of the world is similar: while we were sitting around making interest off of imaginary money China's been turning raw materials and labor into real goods and money. They've got money and the means to generate much more of it. Their relationships with other countries are such that trade embargoes will either not hurt them or give them a valid reason to go to war; their size guarantees no one wants this option. What's the point of international summits and political agreements when the countries involved have no incentive to comply?

[MottZilla]

I agree with Atma in that it's certainly possible Global Warming/Climate Change due to human activity is true. But it's hard to convince people of it. But the general principals of investing in less polluting and more sustainable technology is not a radical or crazy thing to do, it makes good sense. We do need to develop better technology and not just run on fossil fuels till they expire. I am against giving money to poor countries as if we are somehow responsible for their problems. I saw that on the news and thought, go fuck yourself. If they want hand outs they can go ask China. We already spent all our money.

[King Aquamentus]

I live in the state of Missouri. That said, we do not notice the climate change problem, because we're already subjected to it, 365 days a year.

[Dechipher]

I live in the state of Missouri. That said, we do not notice the climate change problem, because we're already subjected to it, 365 days a year.

Those of us in Oklahoma would like to kindly ask those of you in Missouri to shut up and stop complaining. :P

[Nicholas Steel]

It's my personal opinion that global warming is real, but that there aren't any real solutions at this time, and so I'm not entirely certain what we're meant to accomplish. I mean, there's not a whole hell of a lot we can do so long as we're dependent upon fossil fuels - all of the talks going on now ultimately result in mere drops in the bucket, so what are we wasting so much money for if these initiatives don't actually do anything?
It's better to delay then to not do anything at all. If we can delay any major problems until after we stop depending on fossil fuels then we "should" be okay depending on how big of a problem it is that we delayed and if it got worse while attempting to delay it.

[King Aquamentus]

Those of you in Oklahoma don't understand when I'm NOT complaining. Notice how I said I can't tell. I'm very happy.