The precursor video to the current “How It All Ends” project. Posted in the Spring of 2007, it garnered over a million views, and 6000+ comments. The bruising debate identified weak points in the argument, which have been patched, leading to the hours of “Expansion Pack” videos backing up the current “How It All Ends.”
Filed under: Global Climate Change
I’d like to see your “The Solution” video, but I can’t seem to find it on youtube or break. For the most part I agree with you, but I think the bigger issue is “How do we solve this problem” as opposed to “If we should solve this problem”? Do we put a bigger tax on factories that pollute? Do we completely ban the use of fossil fuels? Do we dump tons of iron into the ocean to create plankton blooms? Obviously from your videos you ecourage pretty extreeme measures (column ‘A’ ) but how far do we go? Should we start a war with India to stop them from producing the $2500 car? http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/business/worldbusiness/12cars.html?ex=1349841600&en=d78020874b19c2ca&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Your videos encourage viewers to “Spread the word and encourage polcy change”, but that only gets us so far. What am I supposed to do? Vote Democrat?
You make some good points, and I think there are some people out there who still need to see your video. But, even if every person in the world watched your videos and agreed 100%, we’d still be VERY far away from solving global warning and avoiding the bottom right corner.
I recently came across your video on youtube and was very impressed with the way that you chose to frame the issue. Some friends and I have started a Green Campus Initiative at Ryerson University in Toronto. We have just recently recieved approval and limited funding from the school and are organizing of first meeting. We would love to use your video in our promotions but we can’t get internet access everywhere we go. If it would be at all possible to get a copy of the video so we can help you spread the message we would greatly appreciate it. You can contact us at RyeGCI@gmail.com – Thanks
Dear friend.
I am a fan.
But then I guess I always would be – I am an environmentalist and a business owner. In fact I use my business to promote and promulgate my beliefs. but having only had time to watch the first three of your videos I think that you are missing a pretty crucial point that most commentators seem to glide over. The only people who are worried about the economic consequence of action are big multinational companies.
In the business that I work in there are maybe three huge corporations that are able to dictate terms for the trading of – lets just call them everyday disposable widgets – what they are doesn’t really matter. To satisfy the world demands for widgets they screw down the price of widgets for the widget makers so that the guys who make the widgets only make a 9% profit line – or the manufacturer has to move to China. if we took them more seriously and made them less disposable AND worried about the poor schmucks making them then a few things would happen:
1. multi national widget guys make less money but still a decent wage
2. Chinese workers might see some money too
3. Domestic workers have jobs leading to a more coherent society.
Of course this is all just wishful thinking isn’t it? Well the way we have tackled it is to build a manufacturers co-operative that challenges the big multinationals and is able to compete with the big boys by cutting out their corporate greed and redistributing the wealth in smaller community based companies. Think of it as fair trade but in your own domestic circumstances
I don’t have time to expand fully but these are exciting times in the eco-economic world…
many thanks for your work – I would love to showcase the videos on our website!
Great work! Getting a million hits in such a short time is just, so, like, VIRAL, dude!
There are lots of us out here working on this. I used to get bummed out after reading all the repetitive litany of climate denail talking points on blogs. Then I realised the great people at http://www.realclimate.org and grist and Joe Romm and Andrew Dessler (and and and…) are all picking up the slack. I don’t have to stay up all night banging my head against a wall of skeptics.
So once again, fantastic work. You deserve plaudits and a chance to rest. I think you might want to cut back on caffeine for a while
Take that break you talk about and play with your kids.
Thanks for the comedy routine; I had a good laugh at the goofy hats. Now please provide some scientific fact based evidence to support man made global warming. None of your videos provides any standard scientific methods to support your AGW argument. Sorry, risk management is not science. I feel sorry for your students; enrolling in a science cource taught by a debate teacher.
I would be curious to know your thoughts on the following:
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20080103/94768732.html
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=f80a6386-802a-23ad-40c8-3c63dc2d02cb&Issue_id=
Also, don’t you think that many of the catastrophes/outcomes that you “specifically” listed in column “B” true should also be “specifically” listed under column “A” false as a result of a global depression???
Environmentalism is great, trying to get renewable energy as our main source of energy is awesome, and so on and so forth. However, your argument on how to solve it with policy changes is your major flaw! Spreading the word is great and spending your money with businesses that promote and practice environmentally safe production is even better. But to think government’s “Cap and Trade” will help the situation is NUTS. These are the same people that made the paper industry more environmentally friendly. They did this by passing a bill that gave tax incentives to companies that used biofuels. Sounds great doesn’t it. However, the paper industry (who produced paper in an environmentally friendly manner minus the cutting down of trees) decided to substitute one of its fuels for biodiesel. Now the paper industry pollutes more. Way to go on that policy change. My second problem with your argument is with the risk management approach. It sounds good and would make sense to somebody who was not thinking very hard about the topic. Your argument assumes that we are not doing anything at the moment to protect the environment. Yet, there is a huge green movement in industry trying to come up with better environmentally friendly technologies. Every commercial has something to say about how the company is becoming greener. GEE Why is that? Because consumers spending power is a great motivator. So instead of policy changes you should tell people to only spend their hard earned money with companies that fit in with their environmental ideals. That would be a lot better than passing a bunch of legislation that is not going to speed up technological advances and is instead going to hit families very hard by taking away their spending power. The American Clean Energy and Security Act that is now in the senate would cost each American family nearly $12,500. That is going to hurt a lot of people. On top of that the bill is 1400 pages long and passed the house without people even reading it. So vote by choosing where to spend your money. This leads me into my last comment which is for Bruce. Bruce it is not just multinational corporations that are worried about the economy. Normal hardworking people are worried about the economy. This bill is going to tax the consumer not the corporations because they are just going to pass the cost down to us. So I hope your business is highly successful because your living expenses will skyrocket if this legislation is passed. By the way I am a scientist that works for the UNC School of Medicine and more specifically the Center for Environmental Medicine, Asthma, and Lung Biology.
I meant made the paper industry more environmentally unfriendly. Sorry for the typo.
Also, how is it that you look to the government for help when they are the worst offenders. How environmentally friendly is the Iraq War or any war for that matter. Also, My lab is located in the EPA Human Studies building on the UNC campus. This is a Federal EPA building yet it is the most inefficient environmentally unfriendly building on campus. HMMM! Every year we have a meeting about how to make the building more efficient and nothing ever gets done about it. Government at its best!