I'd like to chime in on this. Glad to see it is not closed yet. I'll write a couple of points which I consider grown up and reasonable, I'll try to say why I see them that way next to every one of them, first and most obvious reason would be the fact that I'm not trying to skew my opinions to fit an already poised political opinion.
Some of these might leave some of you with sores, but that’s not because I wanted to leave you with sores.
Most of these are mine, not heard from an involved side or party. Meaning I actually sat down and gave them some time to see how they hold up against some probing.
The most important; arriving at an answer to the question what should we do (this should also show that OP's question is irrelevant).
This is actually a simple question of deciding upon an action before having a clear and full picture or all the answers if you will. Over time I accepted the fact that Earth is warming up due to human actions, but I still use this particular formula as it would work even if I didn’t accept aforementioned fact. It is starting from a zero position. We can jokingly call it Kruno’s Theorem:
These are the scenarios (taking all of them into account, supposing we don’t know):
The Earth is heating up and it’s human’s fault.
The Earth is heating up and it’s not human fault.
The Earth is not heating up.
These are the actions:
Do something
Do nothing
These are the results:
- The Earth is heating up, it is human fault and we do something – we save what’s left to save.
- The Earth is heating up, it is not human fault and we do something – we clean up a huge portion of our environment and enter the next supposed ice age way cleaner and with much better chance of thriving. We also get rid of much suffering and destruction our filthy economy brings (it is never all of it, but as much as possible).
- The Earth is heating up, it is human fault and we do nothing – we directly suffer all the consequences of our filthy ways (keep in mind; the most responsible will suffer the least), this way we’re no better than a virus; eat while there’s something to eat and die out afterwards.
- The Earth is heating up, it is not human fault and we do nothing – we die out a thousand times more horrible deaths, disease ridden, starved and parched
- The Earth is not heating up and we do something – cleaning and going green is not all about C02, greenhouse and ice caps, there are innumerable other benefits we would all enjoy (yes, the deniers as well)
- The Earth is not heating up and we do nothing – we still lose a lot of what’s sustaining us and we still poison ourselves, further our diseases and suffering since cleaning up is not all about global warming, but living better in most aspects
In every scenario doing something trumps (pardon the pun) doing nothing.
What’s particularly sweet about Kruno’s Theorem; this type of risk assessment belongs to the holy dogmas of the most responsible polluters, it is done exactly the same way Naish’s Prisoners Dilemma was used for a lot of what libertarians preach. So, YES it is beating them with their own weapons.
There is NO need to wait for the jury to come back in (and I never thought they were out in the first place). We can act now on a mere risk assessment. There is NO need to wait for any results and it is COMPLETELY irrelevant that we don’t have a longer period of measuring the emissions.
Cow’s farthing; I can’t, no matter how much I try, consider anyone who still shouts this argument to be even of average intelligence. First of all; cow’s farting is a man made emission – they are there because we eat them. For comparison, polar bear farting is a non issue because we didn’t bread millions of these beasts, because we don’t eat them. – I think it’s grown up to admit that all proxy C02 is still our C02.
Furthermore, this is so obviously made over a single afternoon in a “merchant of doubt” PR agency with only 5% of someone’s effort. Argument goes: all of what we do is not enough to make an impact, but some cows farting, is. Yeah, right! Not falling for such nonsense and, basically non-arguments, just to desperately hold on to your political stance, I would see as grown up.
China’s emissions are our emissions, and by the same logic they are mostly US emissions. Outsourcing is as American as apple pie so just fess up, it’s still your mess. If you want China to produce all of your iphones, imacs, all of your tomorrow’s garbage and everything from your shoe lace to the most complex machines (mine as well to an extent) then the emissions are yours as well. They are a part of your holy mode of production regardless of whether that mode of production left for China. Having guts to admit this to yourself, I would see as grown up.
It is not just cars. All this fractioning of what we actually do is really silly in this day and age. We are doing much damage on all fronts; cars, coal, short expiry dates, deforestation, destruction of biodiversity... all of it. And it’s all connected. More C02 is not just more C02, it is more C02 and less forest to absorb it. It’s all of that.
Also, the gas in the so called green-house is not being heated up only by sun anymore. Google maps made this possible to see (another small victory since nothing is as libertarian as silicone valley); if you were to add up all the asphalt we laid in 20th an 21st it would amount to
an entire continent of nothing but asphalt. FOR THE LOVE OF ME, I can’t see how someone would still even consider that a planet with no asphalt from a century and a half ago would be the same system and behave the same way as a planet with an entire continent being just a huge, flat slab of asphalt. (Is there some sort of "endless absorption theory" I'm not aware of??)
This planet is, in fact, our last frontier. It is a frame of all our actions. Throwing sand in someone’s eyes to obscure this fact is just braindead.