Bush focus on oil imports marks failure on climate, say greens - AFP

[Eugene]

Bush focus on oil imports marks failure on climate, say greens

by Richard Ingham

Wed Jan 24, 8:09 AM ET

PARIS (AFP) - Environmentalists have fired a broadside into President George W. Bush's
State of the Union address, saying he had once more failed to grasp an opportunity for
tackling climate change.

"He remains delusional," was the view of Greenpeace's Steve Sawyer after Bush called
for production of domestic oil and crop-made ethanol fuel to be ramped up to ease US
dependence on energy imports.

"He's still trying to drill his way out of the problem, and he's found an ingenious method
for increasing US farm subsidies while pretending to do something about the energy
problem," said Sawyer Wednesday.

-snip-

Domestic oil production must be increased "in environmentally sensitive ways," Bush added.

-snip-

Full article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070124/wl_afp/uspoliticsbushenergyenvironmentclimatereax_070124123700

[The2ndWheel]

1. This is what we got

It doesn't matter what we do, we're going to alter the environment somehow, even with the green way of doing things. We're trying to keep this large scale machine churning, and anything that we do to do such a thing will cause something to happen to the environment. There will be an unintended consequence to whatever resource we use. We cannot escape that, especially if we do it on a massive scale.

We do have to change, but we have to change the right part. But to do so would kill billions of people. Not to change the right part of the equation would be to increase the total number of people, thus putting more strain onto the system, creating more unintended consequences, one or two of which we might not be able to push off into the future, thus making that result worse than if we changed today.

If we can push every problem off into the future(because we don't really solve anything), that works out for everyone. However, if we still live in a world of limits, then when we hit the wall and can't get over it anymore, well it won't be as much fun.

[hatrack]

2. This sums it up about as neatly as I could have

"He's still trying to drill his way out of the problem, and he's found an ingenious method
for increasing US farm subsidies while pretending to do something about the energy
problem," said Sawyer Wednesday.