Energy Emancipation
In an interview with Grist, Big Coal author Jeff Goodell tells David Roberts:
What do you think? Is energy policy really a question of morality -- a matter of right and wrong?
When I was working on this book, I spent some time looking at the slavery debate. During the slavery debate there was all this stuff: "Oh, you can't abolish slavery, the farms will collapse. What are you going to replace this labor with? We don't have people -- who's going to pick our cotton? Everything's going to fall apart." The great thing Lincoln said is, that's not the issue. The issue is, is it right or is it wrong? You make that decision first and then you decide how to do it.Al Gore has also been stressing this point that climate change is not so much a scientific or political challenge, but a moral one. The rhetoric isn't new. Let's not forget that Jimmy Carter told the republic, as far back as 1977 (before global warming began to be recognized as a concern), that the energy crisis was "the moral equivalent of war."
What do you think? Is energy policy really a question of morality -- a matter of right and wrong?
3 Comments:
Politics *should* be about morality. Gore shouldn't have to make the distinction. But then he knows better than anyone just how much its about money and protecting the status quo.
Until it's a matter of life or death, I think it's hard to make that yes/no connection.
But climate change is becoming a matter of life and death for some species already. (According to Tim Flannery's "The Weather Makers," one-third of mountain species will be threatened with extinction within our lifetimes.) And for people in places like the Maldives and Bangladesh, climate change could be almost equally dire.
Then we will have to decide how much we care about other people, and if we are willing to change our lives, to save others. "No man is an island," updated for the 21st century.
All indications are that it will be a matter of life and death for civilization in the not-too-distant future. If that matters to you, then it's a moral challenge. If it doesn't, then what's morality?
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