Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet

In other words, we should prepare ourselves for four more years of wait and see policy. We should prepare for such occurrence because special interests have undue sway with our governments. In the view of James Hansen1, these special interests “have effectively promoted minimalist actions and growth in fossil fuels, rather than making the scale of investments necessary.” Hansen is referring to investments in efforts to mitigate GHG emissions.

Of course, there still will be the occasional rhetoric about what others are doing or should do. As Professor Romm recently noted, “China has a long way to go to catch up to this country — let alone the entire industrialized world — on cumulative emissions (though they are obviously trying as hard as they can).”

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O.K., Is everybody ready? All together now, shake your index finger at the Chinese dragon and say, “Neener, Neener, You Smokey Wiener”

Michael T. Klare is Five Colleges professor of Peace and World Security Studies. Professor Romm places in the Kuntsler school of energy dystopia.

Klare has written that, “In the new world order, energy scarcity will dominate our lives — determining when we drive, if we travel, and what we eat” — In Salon Klare recently wrote:

What this adds up to is simple and sobering: the end of the world as you’ve known it. In the new, energy-centric world we have all now entered, the price of oil will dominate our lives and power will reside in the hands of those who control its global distribution.

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Professor Romm perceives Michael T. Klare as someone, “who makes Climate Progress and most everybody else into optimists, relatively speaking.”

In this new world order, energy will govern our lives in new ways and on a daily basis. It will determine when, and for what purposes, we use our cars; how high (or low) we turn our thermostats; when, where, or even if, we travel; increasingly, what foods we eat (given that the price of producing and distributing many meats and vegetables is profoundly affected by the cost of oil or the allure of growing corn for ethanol); for some of us, where to live; for others, what businesses we engage in; for all of us, when and under what circumstances we go to war or avoid foreign entanglements that could end in war.

Continue reading here: Push for More Wind Power Where Most Needed

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