Also the parent comment is more about risk management. The sensible thing to do in the absence of information is precisely to imagine the worst outcomes and act with them in mind. The precautionary principle is a statutory requirement in law in some jurisdictions to help avoid the worst outcomes.
I don't know. I've seen so much fear-mongering in my life. We're all going to die from zika, n1h1, ebola, killer bees, aids, mrsa, terrorists, and so on. In each case, there's something to be afraid of, and you might actually know someone who died in one those ways, but the media and the lay people blow it way out of proportion. The people I've know who died have been from drugs, suicide, heart failure, stroke, and car accidents.
> The sensible thing to do in the absence of information is precisely to imagine the worst outcomes and act with them in mind.
I can't accept that as sensible. It's easy to contrive unacceptable courses of action by applying that rule: "The police don't know who the murderers are, so they lock up everyone to avoid the worst outcome." "The doctor isn't sure how bad the infection is, so we amputate all the limbs just in case."
America has an apocalyptical culture. Probably from the cultural imprint of our end times themed christianity during the early years. That whole book of revelations madness. (The Puritans who first colonized the New World were fruitcakes, even back then.)
But we did come very close to snuffing ourselves with nukes a few times.
And ever since I started paying attention to ecological collapse, mid 1980s, pretty much all the predictions have come true. (The only confusing bit there is we've also had amazing technical progress, masking the underlying destruction.)
I so hope that I'm just being an alarmist and it's all going to work out. I have kids, and hopefully grandkids one day. Yet I remain concerned.
Same for the ozone hole, or dying trees from acid rain. When the source of the problem is identified, we can fix it, and that's the case for greenhouse-gas-caused climate change.
Are future generations worth more than current? Should we militarily prohibit poor countries from using fossil fuels which they use to better their lives?
You can say worst outcomes with other things too, meteor, nuclear war, pandemic, terrorism, etc. you always have to find a balance.
With the climate change debate, this balance is completely ignored and people are seriously suggesting making fundamental changes to society without having any ability to know what the consequences of those will be.
Climate catastrophism is itself a potential danger.
Wind and solar constitute less than 1% of world energy consumption and doesn't have all the other properties and uses that makes oil such a fundamental and necessary ingredient for modern living. Hopefully overtime we will find something that's better, for now it's hard to find as amazing and flexible a resource as oil.
Nuclear would probably win out, then oil and coal
