Good news on Climate for a Change

We can stop bothering people about everything and about their carbon footprints. It's too late for that now. And besides, the more we convince people that this is a problem from hell, the more they shut down. Therefore, we have to quit bothering people to change their lives -- we have to make the necessary changes upstream of everyday people, and stop bothering them.

This is why people concerned about the impending climate catastrophe need to realize that it's too late for the gradual, lifestyle-change approach that could have worked if started much sooner (and that I, among others, was wrong to support for too long).

We are in extremis, like a ship heading towards a collision -- this isn't the time to be telling the passengers to all run over to the starboard side and hope that we'll lean a little further to make the impact a little less severe -- this is a time for a radical course change.

That change is simple: Stop burning coal and fooling with "new oil" (oil from coal, oil from tar sands, oil from shale), and limit all deforestation rates to stay under reforestation rates. That's it -- if we can do that, fast, then we have done essentially the best we can do.

Best of all, this gives us the basis for a great deal:

"Hello world, it's us, the people who have been nagging you senseless with increasingly shrill and worried tones about an ever-increasing list of things you're supposed to make minute and calculated judgments about. Well, we're here to say that we've seen the error of our ways and we now realize that we were wrong to propose upending absolutely everything. We'd like to make a deal -- if we can all work together to get the world converted off coal and unconventional oils, we'll stop bothering you about everything else. Fly to your heart's content. Drive anywhere you can afford the gas for. Heat your house to 80F in winter if you like, and cool it to 60F in summer. We won't say a word, so long as you're not using coal or alt-oil to do it. Because we realize that, in the relevant time frame, all the world's oil and natural gas will be used up, by us or someone else. The only hope we have of preventing climate catastrophe is to get off the coal and alt-oils, and prepare society for the transition that has to happen when natural gas and oil run out. But that's a fine problem to have -- as Bill Clinton would say, "In Arkansas, we'd call that a high-class problem," because it's a much nicer problem than the one we're facing now, where we enviros are having to shout and scream about everything that is emitting carbon because we've failed to focus on the real issues: the coal, the alt-oils, and the CO2 trapped in soil. But we're over that now: help us put coal away, stop the oil sands and tar-sands madness, and keep deforestation rates down to less than reforestation rates, and we'll stop bothering you about everything else."