THE ANTARCTIC -The Emperor penguins which featured in the film Happy Feet have suffered a devastating population slump in the past 50 years, according to a report by the WWF or so the article begins.
The problem here is the remoteness of penguins to most of our lives. The only people reading this article are those who care about penguins or have little kitten posters on their walls because they care about all living things. For the rest of us, we have seen penguins probably once or twice in our lives, most likely in a zoo, most likely behind glass..
Now, if the article read:
GEORGIA - 90% of the population of the state of Georgia have moved or are dead due to lack of water in the region, according to whatever hack of a president happens to be in the White House in the next 50 years... Now this is an article that might give us notice to read and care and want to do something.
Unfortunately, if it's getting so bad you can't inhabit Georgia, it's probably too late to do anything to change global warming for another 75 years or so, you just have to ride it out at that point.
If however, we do something now, hell, if every college student replaced a light bulb or something else that had no downside, then maybe Georgia will remain a lovely livable place.
Or will it? The bigger problem is we haven't maxed out on our energy needs quite yet. In other words, if I could afford to run my heater at 74 degrees in the winter, I would. If I could afford to drive two cars at the same time because it was half as expensive, I would find a way. It's called the Efficiency Paradox and it basically says that while energy efficiency in the US has increased almost 50%, our energy consumption has gone up 40%.
At some point this levels off, I mean, I don't want my house at 104 degrees in the winter and really, how big of a car does everyone really need? There's cargo room and then there's cargo room. The bigger question is on the business side. If it cost a business pennies to light up hundreds of neon flashing ads all over the place, believe me they would do it.
Obviously the answer is to increase cost of energy as we increase efficiency of energy, but where's the capitalism in that? We commoditize energy to make it available to more people so they can buy more things that require energy, which translates to bigger profits for those making said energy, right?
This is a tough problem to solve. Reducing consumption, changing lifestyle is the only way to climb this hill of sand we've made. For the 2% that are smart enough to make a lifestyle change, who cares? There's still 98% who continue to wear their blinders and consume like their forefathers.
For the broader America to reduce consumption, that's a paradigm shift.... Those only happen because something big (and usually life changing or catastrophic) just occurred necessitating the change. We won't do it given the current state. Kind of like what's happening to the Emperor Penguins right now. I'm sure they are trying like mad to adapt to their new situation.