My first question would be " how much money did Flannery actually make ? "
Please post the numbers on that .
While I'm not a fan of people from either side of the fence that can exaggerate the rhetoric a bit, I think he makes a valid point.
Most of us would like to leave a better world for our kids if we could. We invest in decent education for kids. WE spend heaps of money so that they can learn sport, the arts and many other things. We take the travelling so that they can get a better view of the world. WE already have saftey and pollution laws so that the world they inherit will be cleaner and safer for them. There's plenty we don't know or do much about but there is plenty that we can do. Shifting to a very low emission power source is just one of them.
History is littered with stories of companies that resisted change because of their bottom line. Tobacco, Oil, Asbestos, Auto industries etc have got a track record of actively disputing the facts when they actually knew the truth.
Spending lots of money to influence public opinion and politicians while knowingly doing bad things.
We now know that we can reduce power generation emissions significantly. We know that we can electrify transport and power industry from renewable sources. We are doing it right now.
Even if we were able to prove one day that industrial CO2 emissions didn't cause mmcc what would be the downside ?
We'd have a super clean, endless supply of clean, cheap energy. Energy that is very flexible and enables all sorts of businesses to prosper rather than be a handbrake on those businesses. Energy that doesn't put heavy metals into the air. Cities that aren't filled with exhaust emissions from cars. Not having to dig big holes to burn coal and oil just once. A vital resource that took millions of years to develop that can be used many times over if we are smart with it's use.
What would be the downside of leaving a cleaner world for our kids again ?
