Do you believe climate change is caused by humans?
It doesn’t really matter if you do, you know. Or if you don’t.
If you think it’s caused by higher solar activity, volcanic activity or other processes humans can’t control, that’s fine.
In fact, you can think it’s caused by aliens targeting us with huge lasers, by kids not eating their veggies or by bunnies with silly things on their heads for all I care.
And I say this, even if my personal conviction is that human activities are indeed playing a significant part in bringing about climate change. Here’s why:
You know all those treehugger things that a lot of scientists are saying we need to do to slow down or stop climate change? Switch to renewable energy and things like that?
Even if you think the atmosphere is like one giant garbage can – a garbage can that can hold all the greenhouse gases humanity decides to dump, without any negative effects whatsoever – even then, doing some of those treehugger things just makes sense anyway.
Regardless of what the actual causes of climate change are.
Moving away from oil will be cheaper
One prime example is the issue of renewable energy sources and whether to invest in improving and spreading the related technology for that or not.
Going from the current oil driven economy to one based on renewable energy and sustainable solutions will cost a lot of money. Of course. Any big restructuring demands considerable resources and effort.
But here’s the kicker: Even if it will cost a lot of money, it’s not the most expensive option. The most expensive option is going on doing what we’re doing at the moment – burning through the world’s oil reserves at a ridiculous pace.
Oil reserves aren’t increasing. For all practical intents and purposes, they’re declining.
As they continue their decline and demand stays the same – or rises – oil prices will increase to intolerable levels. At some point – not too far into the future – the ongoing costs of maintaining an oil dependance will far exceed the initial investment and upkeep of renewable energy sources that we won’t run out of.
And, with oil being a finite resource, we will run out of it. It’s not a question of if, it’s an inevitable question of when. When we do run out of oil, anything or anyone still depending on it is out of luck. In a big way.
Let’s not walk into that trap. Let’s invest in energy sources that will last and phase out those that won’t. Let’s spend a little more now to save big later.
Even if it means doing something that scientists think we should do.
This post is my contribution to Blog Action Day 2009 and to the current Change The World Wednesdays challenge over at Reduce Footprints.
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This post was tagged with: climate change, economy, global warming, greenhouse effect, greenhouse gases, oil, renewable energy
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Wonderful, post as always!
Together, we can make things happen! Thanks for being a part of it.
Yanic.
@Yanic: Thank you
Great post, especially love the rabbit ;-D
@Daria: Thank you! And the rabbit rules