El choque de planetas

MUY interesante FAQ, o preguntas frecuentes, sobre el “calentamiento global” o “cambio climático”. No se lo pierdan. Un ejemplo:

Why not reduce our greenhouse gas emissions just in case?

Because regardless of how nice it sounds, achieving major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the near term is more a fantasy than a meaningful climate policy. People all over the world want to live better. They want more food, more housing, more medical care, more cars—and they want these improvements within their lifetimes. Securing all of these benefits–especially at a time when three billion people are joining the world economy, with the fall of communism and the opening of India and China—requires far more energy than can be produced in the next 50 years by such low-emission technologies as wind and solar power. At the national level, raising prices to reduce energy use—the most efficient way to limit emissions—would cause economic harm intolerable to people in most countries.[xii] Governments that restrict energy use or raise energy prices will render their national economies less competitive against countries that don’t. They will, inevitably, be forced to back away from the controls as companies flee to less-regulated places, taking good jobs with them.

Developing countries—including China and India, which are predicted to surpass the greenhouse gas emissions of developed countries by 2018—have refused to acquiesce to global greenhouse gas reduction schemes.[xiii] The reductions that developed countries could achieve by themselves would have little effect on the climate. To prevent such free-riding, a global climate regime would require establishing a global body with binding authority to set and enforce limits on the energy use of all countries—an unlikely event.