One of the reasons why I think the whole climate change alarmism is, well, alarmism is because the obvious solution is almost always dismissed out of hand. If climate change is occurring and it is due to humans releasing too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and if this activity left unchecked represents an existential crisis for the human race on a par with a meteor impact as some claim, then we should be switching to nuclear power as fast as we can build the new reactors. But we’re not, and those that are prophesying doom are usually the ones telling us we can’t because of the problems associated with nuclear power, e.g. the waste disposal and safety of the plants. The problems they cite are genuine but they don’t represent an existential threat to the human race the way climate change supposedly does and these problems are solvable, particularly if enough time, money, and resources are thrown at them. They are relatively minor, in other words. Therefore, if somebody is going to cite the problems with nuclear power as a reason why we cannot utilise this technology to stave off the imminent destruction of the human race, one is entitled to be skeptical as to the honesty and motivations of the anti-nuclear climate change alarmists.<\/p>\n
In a more general sense, if somebody is citing a major problem and offering a solution, but ignoring more obvious solutions, chances are they are engaging in politics, virtue-signalling, or both.\u00a0I was reminded of this the other day on a matter not related to climate change but another area of environmentalism which this blog likes to talk about<\/a>: carrier bags. Somebody posted on Facebook a link to a story regarding a carrier bag ban which the government of Bali has introduced after two Balinese teenage girls petitioned them. Apparently discarded carrier bags are strewn all over Bali and Something Must Be Done. Naturally this was being applauded by all right-thinking folk, except me who suggested\u00a0it might\u00a0be better to first find out who is littering the island in this way: locals or Australian tourists. One individual thought this meant I was “looking for someone to blame” instead of “finding a solution”, leading me to conclude he was almost certainly a middle manager in a modern\u00a0corporation and had been on a training course recently.<\/p>\n Anyway, my point was that those who litter will continue to litter with whatever they have to hand even if carrier bags were banned, and a better solution would be to identify who is doing it, find out why, and try to educate those people into valuing their environment a little more. That way you retain the utility of the carrier bags plus ensure no other form of littering takes place. Had anyone shown any interest I’d have even talked about how the alternative to carrier bags might be more damaging and a cost-benefit analysis might show\u00a0simply sending somebody around once per day to collect the discarded bags to be the most effective solution.<\/p>\n But alas, I was dealing with the modern-day middle classes in the developed world for whom bans are the first resort rather than the last. Naturally, somebody invoked the plight of “the children”, which The Simpsons<\/em> dealt with so well:<\/p>\n