Shut the right one down
I am a bit of a tree hugger. I watched clear-cutting ruin the scenery when growing up in B.C. Later in University I realized that the damage to the ecosystem was permanent in many ways and the landscape as I knew it would never return.
I am old enough that I remember a world literally much greener than it is now. I think it is important that we understand what constitutes good stewardship of both the environment and our society as we continue to advance. The key here, though, is understanding.
I was once a supporter of Greenpeace, but they have become entirely net negative. Whether by design or ignorance they foster illiterate nonsense thinking that somehow environmental change and species extinction are intrinsically bad and should be opposed at all costs. They are working diligently to send our post industrial society back to the stone age. Thanks to the efforts of Greenpeace and fellow travelers Doctors, Lawyers, Scientists, Judges and other highly trained and expensive human resources waste their time literally sorting through garbage. This activity has prevented sane and sensible industrial scale treatment to recycle materials. How many advances have not yet been made because the productive capacity that would have made them was fussing with garbage or mindlessly protesting fundamental facts of life like evolution through natural selection?
It is ironic that they are so focused on particulars of energy and ignoring the big picture. With abundant cheap energy we can do whatever we wish in terms of limiting our environmental footprints, expanding out into the solar system, automating ever more things, etc. Greenpeace would like to hobble and harass the marketplace without any real understanding and whenever they get their way the results are predictably disastrous.
Greenpeace has their shoulder firmly to the wheel with respect to the increasingly irrelevant Climate Alarm raised by the second-raters in 'Climate Science' and kept alive by spineless politicians who seek to have power rather than exercise leadership. I am not wrong about the fact that *more* CO2 is a *good* thing, but even if I were, with abundant cheap energy we could sequester CO2 at will easily enough.
Mankind is dealing with a limited biosphere. Living things increase in numbers exponentially until they encounter some limiting factor. We have, through a variety of mechanisms been able to dodge Malthusian catastrophe, but the only way to avoid crashing into the boundaries is to lift the boundaries. One way or another the human population will continue to rise until it reaches an external limit.
Environmental stewardship is necessary, but it is not sufficient. We need to respect the math of population growth. Our very best hope for the future is finding a way to get abundant cheap energy. A strategy focused solely on reducing energy usage ultimately results in a reduced standard of living and stagnation or reversal of scientific advancement. Already in Canada we are suffering the ill effects of energy constraints and rising costs due to the pursuit of so-called 'green' energy sources like windmills.
If I had the power, I would shut down Greenpeace tomorrow. It would make the world a better place.