- All human activities, in different degrees, contribute to climate change. Don't believe me? Say that you bike to the office everyday. You enjoy your commute, you never develop a heart condition, and in the course of your long prosperous life you have three kids and nine grandchildren, own several dogs and get a bigger house. In other words, your climate footprint all of the sudden is greater than if you had used a polluting car and died of a heart attack when you turned forty.
By definition, humanity thriving means humanity growing, and with that its footprint on the entire planet.
- But in the aggregate, humanity is what we are. There is a price to pay for climbing that hill, but there is an even greater price for not climbing it. Critters in the Serengeti don't compose poetry, nor make Youtube videos; they are too busy surviving. So are people in places where material scarcity reigns supreme. My father, who never wanted to leave his homeland, is dying at home, and my mother won't hire a nurse not for lack of money, but because she doesn't trust that young people will work for just the money and won't rob them blind.
We have the knowledge, the technology and the means to live in domes in the vast deserts of this planet, to go to the moon or to live in space habitats anywhere in the solar system.
This is incorrect. Please stop saying we have the technology to live anywhere else other than on Earth, it's false: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9YdnzOf4NQ
What some people are doing is obstructing us from going anywhere. We need to stop acting helpless, stand up for what we believe, fight (peacefully), stop the post-truth nonsense that supports these people, and vote them out of office.
> All human activities, in different degrees, contribute to climate change.
It's kinda true, because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics (and ignoring activities that actively reduce climate change, like installing insulation or voting certain people out of office), but meaningless. Riding a bike and riding a private jet both contribute to climate change, but that's a pointless statement.
> Say that you bike to the office everyday. You enjoy your commute, you never develop a heart condition, and in the course of your long prosperous life you have three kids and nine grandchildren, own several dogs and get a bigger house. In other words, your climate footprint all of the sudden is greater than if you had used a polluting car and died of a heart attack when you turned forty.
That's restating the Second Law, in a sense. But we can do all those things, and still prevent climate change by using different technologies.
> We have the knowledge, the technology and the means to live in domes in the vast deserts of this planet, to go to the moon or to live in space habitats anywhere in the solar system.
What do you conclude from that?