"If wishes were horses....." Well, what if they were?
You probably know the next line of this nursery rhyme that Wikipedia dates to 1628. If you don't know the next line, just click that link.
This blog posting is intended to comment on an article by Craig Deutsche, which appeared in the October 2024 edition of Desert Report. That article is also titled, "If Wishes Were Horses..." The point of Deutsche's article is to warn readers about trying to "wish" effective responses to Global Warming into existence:
“Exciting New Discovery Will Solve the Climate Crisis . . . ”How many headlines similar to this one have you seen in the past three months? Reading the article (or listening to the news report), you are told that some new breakthrough has been achieved, that the costs of the new technology will be manageable, and our climate crisis can be averted. If you continue to the end of the story, it may acknowledge that a few details remain to be worked out, but these will be inconsequential, and it can all happen with little or no change to our present lifestyles.Beware! Responsible journalism must do more than hope for easy solutions and should consider the details more honestly, both the promising indications and the unfavorable ones. From the many possibilities in recent media, three examples will be addressed here: 1) industrial carbon capture technologies, 2) modifications to the upper atmosphere, and 3) energy production by nuclear fusion.
I share Deutsche's skepticism about those three purported "solutions" to what Deutsche calls the "Climate Crisis," and what I continue to call "Global Warming." I endorse his warning that we would be wise to look elsewhere for appropriate responses to what - as has become increasingly clear - is a massive, self-created challenge to human civilization.
There is a specific phrase in Deutsche's article that I would particularly like to highlight. This statement is often used to characterize potential "solutions," as follows:
It can all happen with little or no change to our present lifestyles.
Any time you see that claim, "Beware!" I am, as I say, joining with Deutsche in this warning. If someone attempts to tell us that we can "solve" our "Climate Crisis" with "little or no change to our present lifestyles," you know that they are either engaging in wishful thinking, or (more likely) actively intending to mislead us.
The truth is, what is needed, more than anything, are significant (I want to say, "massive") changes to our present lifestyles.
The kind of lifestyle changes required could, I am personally convinced, be liberating. Those who claim that we can avoid fundamental changes in how we have organized our economies, and our societies, and our politics are probably being disingenuous, but even if such claims were made in hopeful good faith, we need to understand that the opposite approach is what we actually need.
Let's get ready for big changes to our present lifestyles!
Like I say, we might find that this could be a liberation, not a disaster.
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