Anyone who has ever been taken for a walk by a large dog will know the feeling. You're sure that it should be the other way around. You should be walking the dog, but the dog has other ideas and it's stronger than you are, so there's very little you can do about it. There is a great force tugging at the lead, and the best thing you can do is try and steer it the way you want it to go, regardless of the dog's own ideas.
All this time I've been hopeful that eventually, and with intelligence, we as a planet will get our own big dog to head in the right direction. The dog is money, business; the global free market economy. I was certain that there had to be a way of getting a social, environmental and welfare agenda in front of the dog and make it want them: to make environmental concern economically profitable; to make it all worth the while of those who want to make money.
I mean; how else could we do it? We can force money-makers to be ecologically sound and sustainable on pain of financial retribution, or give tax breaks to those who operate morally or with humanity rather than adhering to their own rules of economics, but there will always be reticence, avoidance, a dragging of heels...legal tussles. It will not be a goal but a grudging burden which stands in the way of economic streamlining.
What better way to do it than to find a way in which the rules and practices of economics point towards these goals? To make their achievement economically valuable?
It seemed to me to be an attainable goal; on a par with the Holy Grail, but something which could be a reality through technological advancement, value shift..any number of routes.
All of a sudden I'm not so sure.
Where are we going, exactly?
And will there be a drool-covered sponge ball to fetch when we get there?
To the dogs, clearly ;)
Your cause is a noble one, but when the government of the country you're living in doesn't believe in global warming, you're going to struggle a bit.
Right, lets invent a power source that uses a fuel thats pretty much impossible to run out of (hydrogen, for instance) to power it, doesn't produce harmful waste products (nothing but water, for instance).
Right, we've come that far - the fuel cell/hydrogen engine thing. Both Ford and Mercedes have them, and no doubt loads of other companies have too.
Now make it as efficient as a modern internal combustion engine. We're a way off, but its getting there.
Now deal with the might of the enourmous oil corporations and their various vested interests. Companies like Exxon who on one hand actively advertise the fact that they're always researching ways to be greener, newer fuels, etc. On the other, IIRC they effectively stopped the US Govt signing the Kyoto agreement. Bah.
Yeah wot Olly said. In part.
And yeah, the ball is very large and dripping with sticky saliva.
*barf*
Olly: Clinton signed the Kyoto agreement - Bush took the US out of it in the first two weeks of his office. An unlimited fuel-powered engine which would fill the gap of hydrocarbons would need to have an enormous infrastructure in place, not to mention a degree of recurrent saleability along the lines of petroleum...and even if the technology was already available it wouldn't be worth establishing all that until the cost/benefit analysis says it's profitable to do so. Which is likely to be when scarcity of resource pushes up oil prices, rather than the first moment it could be done.
Which was kinda my point...
:-)
Too right, all round - worth saying, though, lest the world forget, that the main reason the US (and, to a lesser extent, Oz) won't sign Kyoto is because those (we?) naughty Europeans saw it as their chance to stick it to the States and quite deliberately loaded the terms agin them.
But yes, bring on realistic pricing accounting for damage, bring on proper tax on air fuel etc.; small steps, we might get there in the end. Here's hoping that one day our ancestors will look back on our primitive ways with disbelief the way that we (I?) look back on, say, the middle ages. Jumpers for goalposts indeed. Oh, hang on...
Thats a point - does the middle ages move with time? In the future will people look upon now as the middle ages?
...continuing the metaphor:
Here boy, fetch!
http://www.environemtal-finance.com
http://www.chicagoclimatex.com
http://www.pointcarbon.com/
http://www.katoombagroup.org/Katoomba/meetings/katoomba6.htm
and many more.
This is all in a very early stage, and this is precisely when persistance and tenacity is required.
You may wish to take a couple of local professors to lunch, and see what they think the opportunities are. Both Geoff Heal and Catherine Clark think a lot about how to use markets to create environmental quality and both teach at Columbia.
Keep the faith!