Climate scientist James Hansen has recently argued that “fossil fuel “CEO’s should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature”. Why? Because they know exactly what they are doing. They are profit-fueled deniers, just like those big corporations who still push cigarettes while denying the well-known strong link between cancer and smoking.
Here are some of the wretched techniques of the fossil fuel corporations, according to Hansen:
Special interests have blocked transition to our renewable energy future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, as tobacco companies discredited the smoking-cancer link. Methods are sophisticated, including funding to help shape school textbook discussions of global warming.
Kirk Murphy of Firedoglake sums up Hansen’s latest statement nicely. Here’s Murphy’s conclusion:
Thanks to Dr. Hansen and thousands of other honest scientists around the world, we know what to do. For twenty years, we’ve known about the problem. We can all be part of the solution, and part of the changes required to preserve our living world in a form that will support the wonderful diversity it supports — including our children and their children. Part our work is to support the 100% carbon tax and whenever possible, shrink our personal carbon footprints. Part of our work is to shut the climate change deniers out of mainstream discussion — in precisely the fashion civilized people now shut Holocaust deniers out of mainstream discussion and mainstream media.
What a concept. Hold people and corporations responsible for their actions when they harm others? Personal responsibility? Good morals? If we start doing that, according to bush it will ruin our economy 🙂
Dagny
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What troubles me most about global warming is that we might already be too late to fix it. According to some experts, we might already be past the point where there is a 50% chance of doing irreparable harm to our planet. One big concern is arctic permafrost: when it thaws, it releases tremendous amounts of methane — a greenhouse gas many times more destructive than carbon dioxide. This could cause a thermal runaway situation, wherein more permafrost thawing leads to more global warming, which leads to even more permafrost thawing, etc. This is not to say we shouldn't change our ways, but that many, many more people need to take this problem much more seriously than they do.
Grumpy: What we are now doing to the Earth is the ultimate problem of the commons. We tend not to fix these sorts of problems. Rather, we ruin big chunks of the planet, then we move on to exploit other parts. We do this largely by over-populating the planet, I believe. 6.5 billion is a "cheap oil" number of people.
On many days I'm pessimistic about humankind's future on planet Earth. There's waaaayyyy too much talk and much too little change occurring.