The amazon, high and dry

Over at the Hooligans, Uptown Ruler speculates what the right-wing spin would be to the images of a drought-stricken Amazon. Hmmh, let's give it a try using one of the more recent of what seems like a regular stream of warm-and-fuzzy, feel good articles on the subject from TCS.

The 'not worth trying' argument:

"Those who advocate stringent controls on carbon emissions have the mistaken notion that we can do something substantial about global warming in the near future. Well, we can't."

The 'mass poverty and gnashing of teeth' argument:

"the global economy would simply collapse if we were to mandate reductions in carbon emissions"

The 'no one else wants to do anything about it, so why should the world leader take the lead?' argument:

"given the choice between ensuring decent standard of living and poverty, most of the world's population will choose the former."

The 'someone in the future will do it, so don't even try right now' argument:

"If driving a hybrid or conserving on your electricity use makes you feel better, then do it. But new technologies will be required to reduce carbon emissions by substantial amounts -- say by 50% or more. Carbon sequestration during the burning of coal, safer nuclear, these are a couple of the more realistic alternatives."

Granted, it's premature to claim that this hurricane or that drought are affected in part by global warming in a linear--human burns stuff, climate warms, bad things happen--progression, but in the face of that being a very real possibility and the fact that in order to do something, we need to start sometime and we are actually able to do something now rather than nothing ad infinitum, we at coeruleus central station must state categorically

Roy, FU and your H2.