...it keeps me from watching politics!
Just so you know, I'm not commenting on the vice-presidential debate yet because I didn't get to watch it! Arrgghh! We had class last night. At our previous meeting, the prof managed to wrap it up by 8 p.m. (ah, efficiency!). Last night, we went until 10 p.m.
I could catch up watching Biden-Palin snippets on YouTube, but I'm a holistic kind of guy: I like to see the whole show, from beginning to end, without interruption, so I can get a feel for the total ebb and flow, how answers built on answers (or didn't), what patterns the candidates followed.
For now, I'll read the transcript, maybe comment later, if there's anything new left to say about the event.
But I do already have one rhetorical knot for my readers to unwind for me: if we need to deal with climate change impacts and clean up our planet, and if we should cap carbon emissions in that effort, how does it make sense to pursue an "all of the above" approach, where "the above" includes increasing production of the very fossil fuels that exacerbate climate change and dirty the planet?
I think "all of the above" means that we should increase the production of all forms of energy from domestic sources, while steadily decreasing our reliance on imported fossil fuels.
ReplyDeleteWe could then use the "all of the above" approach as a stop-gap measure while we wean ourselves entirely off of fossil fuels and onto wind, tidal, solar, geothermal, and nuclear energy.
So, while domestic fossil-fuel production would increase for a while, our actual consumption of those fuels would start going down right now, and would eventually become zero.
It just simply is not possible to stop using oil or coal right now, unless you want to join the Amish with their carriages, and want to return to farming with horses, park the cars and bike or walk or again ride a horse or mule everywhere. Somehow I don't think that would fly. There has to be a transition period, and that is going to take awhile. And I do not believe that using oil and coal products for the next years until we hopefully can transition is going to doom our planet. There has to be a little common sense here.
ReplyDeleteIf you haven't seen it yet, check out the interactive transcript of the vice-presidential debates: http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/president/debates/vice-presidential-debate.html
ReplyDeleteYou can search for terms and watch the video (in full) or see the points at which each uses a term like "maverick" (Biden--9 times, Palin--4 times, Ifill--0 times).