Joe Prins’s orientation on global warming brings Nero, fires and fiddling to mind. The direction of his arguments encompasses an endless process of obscure facts, irrelevant facts, and quibbling on those that are now widely accepted.
It doesn't really matter that Denmark, Sweden or any other country relies on Germany, France or whosit for “electricity requirements.” It is a sad thing if millions die early from dung fires in their huts: it is sad as well that millions die of cancer, emphysema, asthma and other diseases from the production and use of carbon fuels.
But denial of anthropogenic global warming is a problem of a different order – and that is not to belittle the others. The ecosphere and all its component plants and animals, including all of us, is severely threatened.
Even if you don't follow the science or individual climate disasters the very fact Apple, Google, Microsoft and other corporate giants have contributed $140 billion for a solution to global warming is one indication something’s afoot. Pope Francis is taking it seriously and exhorting all the mayors of the world to do likewise: he denounces the “structurally perverse” global economic system that both exploits the poor and destroys the Earth. There are some alarming stats out there available to all that indicate the self-accelerating, vortex nature of the problem, like the imminent melting of the permafrost and subsequent release of methane gas, with its monstrous global warming potential, into the atmosphere. There is also the fact that global warming will entail stupendous economic losses for everyone that could be mitigated by taking serious action now.
But, I suppose, were Prins’s house on fire he would work out the risk in terms of thermodynamics and economics before calling the fire department.
Doris Wrench Eisler, St. Albert
