Because there's more to the internet than hits alone, Steve Firth
wrote:

Stewart Hargrave wrote:

Absolutely not.

Sticking your head in hte sand will not fix anything.

The presumptions involved in this comment give the impression of you
not being interested in solutions so much as a side in an argument.

If you believe there is only one solution you will not
be able to accept that there may be others.

We have a limtied time to implement a solution.

How long do you give it? Until what?

We will always only have a limited, though indefinite, time. But the
extent to which we'll allow those limits to reach is entirely
arbitrary, and if history is anything to go by, constantly changing.

There can only ever be interim answers. Nuclear power or wind power or
any other power is only going to do for the moment. Most people seem
to think that there should be an answer that, once implimented,
resolves everything forever. Can't be the case. It will always be
something that we always have to reconsider. The best that we can hope
for is that some answers are enduringly less inappropriate than
others.

Can you propose any
non-fossil fuel alternative that will work?

Depends what you mean by 'work'. There are proposals being made all
the time. The fact that they all become subject to political
polarising results in people presuming there is only one 'solution'
and all the others must be found to be wrong. This is not only stupid,
but it seems to make your opening jibe rather ironic.

Part of the problem is that we all want 'The Government' to do the
difficult stuff (which we will then complain bitterly about, and not
bother voting). We don't want to have to consider the changes we could
individually make, and grizzle like mad when they are imposed upon us.

The job of the governmant is, of course, to not please all the people
all the time, but any government is going to include a whole range of
solutions to appear inclusive to a whole range of people. So we end up
with a camel that suits nobody but included everybody in its design.
Politically it's difficult for it to be otherwise.

In the end, any solutions that will 'work' are going to be the ones we
find most culturally acceptable. This probably means the ones that we
think will cost us least and involve fewest challenges to our daily
lives, but are preferably the ones we think may kill us most slowly.

That suits those with an aligned interest very well.

The major block of "aligned interests" are the so-called greens. I
listened this week to "The Moral Maze" on R4 where it was obvious that
the one pushing an ecologically unsound and unsustainable "solution" was
the so-called green pushing unworkable, polluting solar power.

Didn't hear it. I find the programme unbearable - people arguing and
becoming entrenched rather than learning about other people's values.
Bit like the H of P. In fact a bit like much of usenet, too, come to
think of it.

By 'aligned interest' I meant to imply those with something to gain.
There are undoubtedly so-called greens making tons of money out of
so-called green stuff that just makes the situation worse. Pound notes
used to be green. But I doubt they are more of a 'major block' than,
for example, the pro-nuclear lobby which inevitably has far more money
invested in it.

That so-called green person may have been ignorant rather than
scheming. But we can all be guilty of that charge - worse in fact; we
so seldom realise how ignorant we are *as* we accuse others of it
(look, I'm including me in this sweaping statement, OK?). So much of
our information necessarily comes from pre-polarised sources.

What about changing our consumption habits?

You change yours.

Aww; it stings, it stings.

But at the same time neatly demonstrates how entrenched polarisation
creates 'sides' rather than solutions.


--

Stewart Hargrave

I run on beans - laser beans


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