I've followed the Global warming debate for years. Right or wrong, the Global warming "scare" has been positive as it's helped focus global attention on sustainability.
The way most of we humans are living on this planet is short-sighted at best. Dealing with the by products of human civilization is critical unless you are of the mind that we should rip, tear, burn and expand until we kill ourselves off, or just the most powerful are left.
I was born in Burbank, Ca in the San Fernando Valley (just N of LA) in 1952. It was a beautiful place to live. There were some large housing tracts and towns spread about but the Valley was mostly cattle ranches, orange groves and small family owned farms. 12 years later the valley had mostly become paved roads, suburbs and strip malls covered with filthy polluted air. The rapid pace of growth was stunning. Of course this was in a semi-arid area. In their great wisdom the Army Corps of Engineers turned the LA river into a concrete culvert and starting diverting water from N California to feed this urban sprawl.
I left this urban wasteland around 1973 and ended up in the Sacramento area a few years later. My Grandparents old house there, which I used to visit as a young child and I remember being surrounded by olive orchards, orange groves and open cattle ranges (we used to watch cowboys round up cattle from the breakfast table), was now surrounded by...paved roads, suburbs and strip malls.
It just wasn't LA that had changed it was much of California. Sadly it's still changing. If this nonsense continues soon we'll have one large city from San Diego to Sacramento. Not sure where the water is going to come from, nor does anyone else either. We can always build Nuke power plants to air condition this mass of humanity, not sure what we'll do with the waste though from this...nor does anyone else. The fuel for the cars that fill the roadways in this urban mess is going to come from where? Of course someone could develop the magic battery for these cars...but what will we do with the old batteries? Landfills sure don't want them.
Our lifestyle (developed nations anyways) is built around laziness and greed (imho anyways *cough* cough*). Most of our political leaders and many of our citizens seem to have the attention span and foresight of mosquitos. If it's determined 30 years from now that Global Warming really was more a natural pattern the Earth is going through and less because of our waste products who cares? If the fear of Global Warming forces us to deal *now..today* with some of the critical issues affecting mankind and how we treat our environment then I'll gladly jump on that bandwagon.
