Men of courage such as Prince Charles have called for a rapid response to climate change akin to fighting WWII, George Monbiot continues to show through methodical research that dramatic emission cuts are the only way forward, and lesser men such as myself have pointed out the need for serious structural changes in how society is organized to fight climate change; including population controls, carbon taxes, a ban on coal, an end to ancient rainforest logging [alert] and rapid, ambitious renewable targets, if we and the Earth are to survive. Forget about geoengineering proposals including seeding the ocean with iron (plankton blooms = ocean dead zones), orbiting Earth mirrors to reflect radiation, and distant plans to filter and sequester carbon from coal and the atmosphere. Doing so will lead to severe negative and chaotic follow-on effects, and distracts from the obvious – climate change is caused by greenhouse gas emissions and it will only be successfully addressed by starting to dramatically reduce these emissions now. In addition to the Chinese and American governments, and the UN IPCC process; individuals such as Laurie David, Leonardo DiCaprio, Richard Branson and even Al Gore who sell easy, painless chimerical solutions are full of it. Climate change and the whole raft of attendant global ecological emergencies will only be solved through extreme personal sacrifice and learned voluntary simplicity, and major societal restructuring of economics, agriculture, transport and others. Those looking for easy answers that allow continued profligate energy consumption and living large are delaying the hard choices necessary to save being. Cimate change incrementalists do a disservice to truth and the Earth.
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