Speaking as someone with scientific training - part of the problem is vocabulary. "climate change" should have been used from the very beginning, because people get all in a flutter when you say that global warming has made it colder. You pump more energy into a heat-driven system, and lo and behold, the *extremes* get worse. Even some of the plateaus change. How much is our fault - good question. Are we contributing? Undoubtedly - we have antarctic ice core samples to prove it. It is enough to tip the balance? Maybe. Do we really want to do *nothing* about it because we don't believe it - even though the same changes that could reduce what effect we do have *also* benefit us by causing less air pollution? I hope not. This is definitely one of those cases where erring on the side of caution might not be a bad thing. *If*, and in my opinion, a *big* if, we are *not* effecting the environment, then the changes we make will only benefit us by reducing pollution. If we *are*, then maybe, just maybe, we can stave off a possible catastrophe, because realizing it after it starts is too late.
Also, for some historical context, the whole idea of climate change due to fossil fuel consumption is not *new* - one of the first proposals of the *possibility* that it could happen dates from *1911*. Though they were mainly worried about the effects of coal burning, the concept is the same.
On a completely separate note - I'm all for reduction in oil consumption - not *only* because of the climate change possibility, but *because* I think capitalism is still better than communism. Oil is the backbone of nearly *every* industry these days - and there is, by definition, a finite amount of it. You can *recycle* metals - even if we mine every gram of iron out of the crust - it's all still around, either as rust or metal and can be reused. Oil, well, good luck turning CO2 and H2O back into oil in anything under millions of years. If we burn all of the oil as fuel - well, where do we get our petrochemicals from that make everything from fertilizers, drugs, clothing, plastics, etc, etc. Coal? Sure, with a *huge* amount of effort - and it's a limited supply too. Not everyone who wants to reduce fossil fuel use is an anti-capitalist commie - some of us have other, more logical reasons. Why *wouldn't* we want to make the air cleaner? Why *wouldn't* we want to stop destroying huge tracts of land in an attempt to get at rarer and rarer sources of petroleum? That's not anti-capitalism, that's common sense! The posts above make the point "follow the money"...what money? Oh, right, a free market economy sells things....so companies that sell clean energy technology can make profits, give dividends, and employ people too....sounds good to me. If you're going to complain about creating a false need to make someone money - well, that's a time-honoured tradition. Wars driven not by self-defence, but because of desired resources, or political games. *ADVERTISING* which attempts to convince people they can't live without something they've never had before. Who *NEEDS* an Iphone6, especially if they already have an iphone? A "war on drugs" that is self-perpetuating, because it makes higher profit margins for those that are in the business, so they go for larger markets, so there are more people fighting it, which makes profits go up, and round and round we go. It's the capitalist way to make money off people - why are you suddenly against that?
