I always do speak emotively about subjects that are important to me. I also don’t think that the case is stated anywhere near strongly enough – I think half of the problem is the majority of people know it’s generally bad, but they just don’t think it will effect them. That’s why I state my case strongly, and emotively, to appeal to them, my peers. Almost every one of my friends, when I ask them, don’t bear climate change a second’s thought. These are people who don’t watch the news, don’t read a newspaper, the message has simply not gotten through to them. I am not trying to scaremonger, I am trying to communicate what I believe I cannot state in strong enough terms, is the very real truth of imminent global climate destabilisation. Predicting the future of that accurately is damn near impossible, but you have to try and communicate the potential horror of it — and that’s exactly the same tactic that The Age of Stupid uses.

The only thing that we CAN do is change our lifestyles, that’s what reducing our emissions IS. Our lifestyles ( driven by the market ethic which has dominated the latter end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21stC ) are entirely unsustainable, the way we waste, the way we consume, unsustainable. I urge you to watch the MacKay presentation.

You think economic change is the solution? How has unrelenting economic growth ( which I take to be what you mean when you purport the alternative a ‘functionless economy’ ) helped us thus far? The credit crunch, an agricultural system in disrepair, our natural crops shipped cheaper from elsewhere, a culture that revels in waste?

Of course I don’t advocate a hair shirted, broken backed society that lives in mud huts. There’d be nowhere to rig up my wifi for one thing. What I do think is imperative to our survival is using the technology we have available to us to change the way we work, that we consume fairly and wisely. This includes meals of meat only a couple of times a week, it includes locally sourced, seasonal foods, eliminating food waste, it includes fixing things that break, making things that last longer, approaching everything with a freecycle ethic. It also includes an awful lot of green collar jobs, a national transport system that’s second to none, community-led grass roots energy provision, and governmental, top down change in the infrastructure, economy and trade of this country.

That’s not utopian. That’s the only option. And it’s not consumption free, it’s balanced.

sorry but that’s just a ridiculous statement, France, right next door and slightly larger than us, produces around 80% of its power through nuclear energy and clearly does not have its entire coastline covered with nuclear power stations.

Climate change fear scaremongering does no-one any good, it doesn’t solve any problems, does not motivate people and allows idiotic statements like the one above to slip in and damage the hard science at the core of the issue.

The idea that we can suddenly change the “lifestyles” of western civilisation to combat climate change is absurd, the simple fact is that attempting to “scare” people into action on climate change will simply not work, or at least it certainly won’t work fast enough. The only force we have that is actually any good at affecting economic change is the market, and the sooner the greenie left realises that and starts to take action based upon it rather than being brainwashed by some vision of a huge utopian consumption free and functionless economy

http://charlottegore.com/2009/08/31/no-light-here.html

I commented as Thomas Byrne on there, property right’s and local level activism is the way forward.