Kerry: Air conditioners as big a threat as ISIS

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“As we were working together on the challenge of [ISIS] and terrorism,” Kerry said. “It’s hard for some people to grasp it, but what we–you–are doing here right now is of equal importance because it has the ability to literally save life on the planet itself.”

People don't want to hear it. And few will accept or react to it because it doesn't provoke a primate-style knee-jerk reaction to an immediate, violent threat...but he is right.

HFCs will make life difficult for the planet in the future...ISIS are making life difficult for the planet now...

Governments tend to operate on election cycles....

The average Joe is not going to give up their fridge or airconditioner....

Well, how can you fix it?

No one is going to force China to stop. India. No one is stopping the massive population boom in Africa (all of that food and medical aid is contributing to it, ironically).

People won't change; the lifestyle has been set. Electric cars for everyone? You still have to make them. Ban AC and other high energy personal appliances when there's no justified reason for their use? Good luck with that.

Nope, we've crossed that hill, and the only thing that'll help is if someone blinks away a good portion of the human species.

Full blown nuclear war and subsequent population control afterwards might be favorable here if the environment is what you care about.

duplicate...

Last edited by cyberdad on 25 Jul 2016, 1:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

You probably are not old enough to remember that China and India tried population control measures as far back as the early 1970s. China's one child policy is going to be scrapped (or modified) while India's free transistor radios in exchange for vasectomies didn't really work.

I know of China's and how it was somewhat recently lifted. Even that wasn't enough, and with it lifted.... I think they're supposed to stagnate in several decades with Africa catching up and being around the same; by then..., by now, it's too late.

If people don't get to the root of the problem, it's going to self-correct itself anyway, so I guess there's that consolation; too bad for all of the critters that'll perish along with the humans.

there are possibilities, and there are things we can do (meaning: it's not just pure deterministic fate), but i think the countdown for global collapse started when agriculture was first developed. the thing is we're much closer in time to the crash in the future than to what started it all in the past

now it's not a matter of if, and i don't think it ever was. it's a matter of when and how. there will be a crash, but that doesn't necessarily mean all the passengers will die. the question to be reflected upon is, "with each iteration of greater-scale collapse, how able and prepared will we be to face it and react?"

humans used to be grasshoppers. then came agriculture and civilization, and we became locusts. same species, different implications

The issue that Kerry (and Al Gore before him) seem to have missed is that development combined with population growth will mean increased consumerism. More carbon emissions and HFCs, deforestation, acidification etc etc....we in the west look like hippocrites given western industrialisation is largely responsible for global warming...

I will never give up air conditioner, they will have to take it from my cold dead hands.

Not even for a free vasectomy?

@dillogic
What do you mean "our lifestyle is set"?
Who set it, with what authority?

Our lifestyle developed, and the development was guided by capitalism's demand for consumerism. Someone made billions from it.
But guess what: you don't have buy into that.
Get a bike.
Get a pair of shoes that last a lifetime.
Wear that old shirt and only buy a new one when you apply for a new job or get married.
Shop in a thrift store.
Learn how to repair things, esp. your computer.

You know. Don't say "our lifestyle is set" when what you mean is "I, personally, can't be be bothered to act until half of humanity is wiped out"

If air conditioning was banned Florida would revert to an uncharted wilderness again.

This is about the emitted HFCs, not the energy use.

There are solar powered AC units on the market.Find a way to cut down or eliminate the HFC's and problem solved.
http://www.lennox.com/products/heating- ... olar-ready

You want my opinion??

Rampant materialism and/or consumerism is a bigger threat that ISIS.

It, along with the envy, greed, and poor methods of defining self-worth that underlie it, is the single biggest threat to human life, health, happiness, and well-being. Other than maybe micro organisms anyway.

And it's such an embedded part of our cultural psychology that it isn't going anywhere.

Take a look at the lifestyle of Al Environment Gore. Oh. Crap.

I even gave up and started living the American Material Fantasy, though it makes me want to vomit.

Collapse will change it. Nothing else will.

OK.

Kerry's grasp on reality, always tenuous, is now slipping away completely …