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If we invest in researching and developing energy technology, we’ll do some real good in the long run, rather than just making ourselves feel good today. But climate change is not the only challenge of the 21st century, and for many other global problems we have low-cost, durable solutions.
I think it’s great that we have organisations like Greenpeace. In a pluralistic society, we want to have people who point out all the problems that the Earth could encounter. But we need to understand that they are not presenting a full and rounded view.
I’m no expert on American politics.
I tentatively believe in a god. I was brought up in a fairly religious home. I think the world is compatible with reincarnation, karma, all that stuff.
Money spent on carbon cuts is money we can’t use for effective investments in food aid, micronutrients, HIV/AIDS prevention, health and education infrastructure, and clean water and sanitation.
The main environmental challenge of the 21st century is poverty. When you don’t know where your next meal is coming from, it’s hard to consider the environment 100 years down the line.
In the rich world, the environmental situation has improved dramatically. In the United States, the most important environmental indicator, particulate air pollution, has been cut by more than half since 1955, rivers and coastal waters have dramatically improved, and forests are increasing.
We worry about the seemingly ever-increasing number of natural catastrophes. Yet this is mainly a consequence of CNN – we see many more, but the number is roughly constant, and we manage to deal much better with them over time. Globally, the death rate from catastrophes has dropped about fifty-fold over the past century.
I think Al Gore has done a great service in making global warming cool. He’s basically taken it from a nerdy, almost ignored issue to making it what it is – namely, a problem.