Everyone, or nearly everyone, will spend a few moments reflecting on the close of the first decade of the 21st Century before beginning the next decade with a an awe inspiring hangover. We, here in the land of green opportunity, are no different. Let us review the events of the past decade in all their glory, or ignominy, as we prepare for a fresh new decade of environmental success.
Proving veggies can be sexy, sales of organic foods rose from $1 billion in the previous decade to over $24 billion by 2009.
- President Clinton banned roads from a third of our nations forests before leaving the environment in the hands of George Bush and Dick Cheney.
A former Vice President becomes an environmental rockstar while tossing his automaton personality in the recycle bin.
The Supreme Court dismissed President Bush’s greenhouse gas policy declaring the Environmental Protection Agency has the right to do its job. The poster child of conservative business, the insurance industry, declares climate change is real.
Fancy phrases like “impacts of biodiversity loss on Ocean ecosystem” translates to no fishsticks, or tuna sandwiches, for you.
Consumer protection arises out of necessity with the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s active participation in helping you find seafood you can eat – guilt-free.
- China usurped the title of World’s Biggest Polluter, from the United States.
- As a counter point to Audrey II Italy brought us smog eating cement.
Detroit joined Japan on the green bandwagon by offering hybrid and electric cars families could, and would want to, buy. At the same time, shortsighted legislators in congress did away with tax incentives.
LA county, San José, San Francisco, and other jurisdictions join Baltimore and Paris to ignore State legislators in bidding farewell to the plastic bag. Oregon is ready to become the first state in the new decade to ignore the American Chemistry Council.
Legislators in California listened to the American Chemistry Council in rejecting Assemblymember Julia Brownley’s proposed ban on plastic bags.
Rainforests caught a break as options to deforestation became more popular.
Despite the continuing rise of the iPad, Kindle, online newspapers and the paperless office - paper consumption has not decreased
And finally, who could forget
- BP. The economic cost now ranges between $40 billion and$200 billion. Paying this debt may be relatively easy for BP, with little debt and an estimated $26 billion in cash flow next year, but the question remains. Can we afford the real loss of small business, tourism, food safety, environmental degradation and economic loss?
Just for grins, let’s see how polar bears take care of the high tech toys meant to help:
Let us know if we’ve left off your favorite environmental moments of the past decade.
{To ring in the new decade Lisa Jensen has plans to join friends in downtown San José for a walking tour of planned musical festivities, then ride a bike or maybe live large and take a pedicab for a predawn breakfast.}
rogerthesurf
December 31, 2010
I think that we are in the grip of the biggest and most insane hoax in history, and unless the public get wise to it soon, we will all be parted from what wealth we have.
Lets take a simple economic view of what is likely to happen.
In the absence of sufficient alternative solutions/technologies, the only way western countries can ever attain the IPCC demands of CO2 emissions reduced to 40% below 1990 levels, (thats about 60% below todays) is to machine restrictions on the use of fossil fuels. Emission Trading schemes are an example.
As the use of fossil fuels is roughly linear with anthropogenic CO2 emissions, to attain a 60% reduction of emissions , means about the same proportion of reduction of fossil fuel usage, including petrol, diesel, heating oil, not to mention coal and other types including propane etc.
No matter how a restriction on the use of these is implemented, even a 10% decrease will make the price of petrol go sky high. In otherwords, (and petrol is just one example) we can expect, if the IPCC has its way, a price rise on petrol of greater than 500%.
First of all, for all normal people, this will make the family car impossible to use. Worse than that though, the transport industry will also have to deal with this as well and they will need to pass the cost on to the consumer. Simple things like food will get prohibitively expensive. Manufacturers who need fossil energy to produce will either pass the cost on to the consumer or go out of business. If you live further than walking distance from work, you will be in trouble.
All this leads to an economic crash of terrible proportions as unemployment rises and poverty spreads.
I believe that this will be the effect of bowing to the IPCC and the AGW lobby. AND as AGW is a hoax it will be all in vain. The world will continue to do what it has always done while normal people starve and others at the top (including energy/oil companies and emission traders) will enjoy the high prices.
Neither this scenario nor any analysis of the cost of CO2 emission reductions is included in IPCC literature, and the Stern report which claims economic expansion is simply not obeying economic logic as it is known in todays academic world.
The fact that the emission reduction cost issue is not discussed, leads me to believe that there is a deliberate cover up of this issue. Fairly obviously the possibility of starvation will hardly appeal to the masses.
AGW is baloney anyway!
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com