The climate change narrative insists that we are all doing something wrong. The results, they say, will be catastrophic for the planet. What we are doing wrong is: activities that put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That all of our private and public behaviors result in carbon dioxide emissions is pretty much true, but is carbon dioxide emission the worst thing the western consumer is doing environmentally speaking?
When is the last time you heard discussion of any other form of industrial pollution? The production of EV batteries is environmentally catastrophic. Most consumer electronics carry a similar pollution cost. While activists shout for us to stop using cars, disposable consumer products continue to dominate the market.
I’m not a fan of doomers, but I am concerned that we are covering up real ecological damage with the specter of climate change. Thoughts?
Not just damage, but mismanagement and corruption.
California is probably the worst example, but Maui looks to be the same shit. Poor land and forestry management by the government, combined with utility companies not clearing fuel from under powerlines lead to massive fires. These are then blamed on climate change.
Other examples are floods and landslides. Massive, but normal or certainly not unprecedented, rainfall hits a place that has had a combination of massive logging operations clear cutting huge swathes of land, and or property development on known flood areas. The inevitable happens, and the landslide wipes out a whole neighbourhood while the huge development that sits at the bend of the river and is named "the place that floods every 10 years" in the local language gets a few meters of water.
Add onto this land mismanagement either property development, windfarm developers or climate activists with matches and you get this summers fires around the Mediterranean.
At the heart of this is a mix of environmentalists demanding an end to logging and proper forestry management, lazy, broke or corrupt local government failing to clear drainage ditches (how the south of England flooded a few years ago), or just deferred or embezzled maintenance building up fuel load until a powerline sparks or lightning strike burns down a whole town with 1k+ kids.