Wow, he's actually posting!
Yep, it's true. Bonus: it's not a post on the goings-on in my life so much or, at least, it isn't meant to be so much as of right now.
So, latest on my list of books that I am reading is Thomas Friedman's "Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution - and How It Can Renew America."
The premise, which may be surmised in damn near its entirety through its title, is that through the West's Industrial Revolution and through the Asian Industrial Revolution, now in its nascency, we are plunging ourselves and our planet into twin disasters of drastic and negative environmental change as well as an eventual social collapse due to the mass development of the middle class in what were, up to the 1980's, third world nations due to the rise in demand for an American lifestyle - i.e. A lavish lifestyle that ignores sensiblity and any sort of repercussions.
The point that I get so far is that we need to not only revamp the way we do things here, but worldwide. Problem is: we may change the way we conduct ourselves here, through billions of dollars of investments in green technologies, more than likely sweeping legislative reform and new legislature (to prevent those who refuse to confirm to new standards and to, I. An ideal world, buck big business), but we cannot make the rest of the world conform to our standards, even though the rest of the world is inline with Kyoto and other international environmental agreements - spurned by the United States thaks to the Bush administration. Yeah, most of the already industrialized world will agree to *most* standards that may be discussed, but the nations that are developing, especially China and India, are aping our oil dependent development model and will not be easily persuaded to develop and implement a more expensive and unrefined system over a - relatively and in the short term - cheaper system that is already proven, in place, and has provided results for the entire Western world.
I don't know. I know it needs to happen, and I am really excited for what the Obama Administration is trying to do, but to aplly these sweeping changes to the real world may require something more than we really have - with consequences that our children's children may have to deal with.
I can see the appeal of "mortgaging our children's future to pay for laziness today."
So, latest on my list of books that I am reading is Thomas Friedman's "Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution - and How It Can Renew America."
The premise, which may be surmised in damn near its entirety through its title, is that through the West's Industrial Revolution and through the Asian Industrial Revolution, now in its nascency, we are plunging ourselves and our planet into twin disasters of drastic and negative environmental change as well as an eventual social collapse due to the mass development of the middle class in what were, up to the 1980's, third world nations due to the rise in demand for an American lifestyle - i.e. A lavish lifestyle that ignores sensiblity and any sort of repercussions.
The point that I get so far is that we need to not only revamp the way we do things here, but worldwide. Problem is: we may change the way we conduct ourselves here, through billions of dollars of investments in green technologies, more than likely sweeping legislative reform and new legislature (to prevent those who refuse to confirm to new standards and to, I. An ideal world, buck big business), but we cannot make the rest of the world conform to our standards, even though the rest of the world is inline with Kyoto and other international environmental agreements - spurned by the United States thaks to the Bush administration. Yeah, most of the already industrialized world will agree to *most* standards that may be discussed, but the nations that are developing, especially China and India, are aping our oil dependent development model and will not be easily persuaded to develop and implement a more expensive and unrefined system over a - relatively and in the short term - cheaper system that is already proven, in place, and has provided results for the entire Western world.
I don't know. I know it needs to happen, and I am really excited for what the Obama Administration is trying to do, but to aplly these sweeping changes to the real world may require something more than we really have - with consequences that our children's children may have to deal with.
I can see the appeal of "mortgaging our children's future to pay for laziness today."