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Permalink Reply by Baxter (Gene) Miller on December 9, 2009 at 5:32pm

It will be a while before I believe that a private jet trip to anywhere to discuss man's impact on climate change makes any sense at all. Don't start with the fleet of limos' to get those clowns around town. Next time do a "Go to meeting" confence call and save the planet.

It is time that we all pulled up our collective boot straps and and made individual contributions to saving our little part of the world and stop tring to inflict our values on every on else.

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Permalink Reply by Trace One on December 9, 2009 at 6:03pm

and we also have to stop obsessing about Al Gore's particular carbon footprint..These are not knock-out constraints..As the carbon footprint for the Copenhagen meeting does not mean abandon all hope, ye who enter here..this is a world, trying to solve a world problem..Focus!!

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Permalink Reply by Gabriel Hydrick on December 15, 2009 at 4:52pm

Right on, Right on! Kudos to Baxter

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Permalink Reply by Mike G on December 10, 2009 at 3:28pm

The reason that Dr. Hanson said this about Copenhagen is because he doesn’t think carbon trading will work. The only reason the skys of the US and Europe are cleaner is because #1 better technology #2 less manufacturing (moved overseas). Although it sounds like a good idea on paper it just doesn’t work. If it does pass it may turn out to be a lucrative investment. But, are we ready to pay for fluctuating market rates as the value of carbon fluxes, smiling when the prices go up and crying when it collapses. Same story different commodity. For that matter do we trust the same people that manage Wall Street to manage our carbon? (note: There really are some very intelligent and ethical people working on Wall Street that are doing a lot of good, but no trusto).
As far as our support as landscape architects what can we do?
1)Support and Protect Personal and Public Property Rights. This includes Air and Water. For our own sake and those that contract our services. Recently the EPA announced that Greenhouse gases are a danger to human health, which may give more regulatory power to the government to control emissions (whether or not they decide to use it) which if the do will cause increases in the prices of energy. (http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/08D11A451131BCA585257685...)
We can guess that this will be the center of future litigation but eventually the NRDC will sue the pants off the EPA to enforce it.
2)Advocate for Energy Conservation. This is one of the best measures to reduce energy needs in any form.
3)Make Economics part of our great debate and why its so important to Sustainability (the 3 Circles with Sustainability in the center) when the prices go up, and they will for everything from mulch to concrete, help our clients invest wisely in landscape / urban development and renewal. Something we need to keep the pipeline open for, cause this isn't going to be easy.

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Permalink Reply by Boilerplater on December 18, 2009 at 11:11am

This just came out on Treehugger:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/12/97-climate-scientists-human...
OK, so its Treehugger. Consider the souce, right? And someone's probably going to say that just because 97% of climate scientists say its happening it doesn't mean it is. Yawn.

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Permalink Reply by Ben Yahr on December 18, 2009 at 12:06pm

Treehugger- brought to you by the Discovery Networks, proud of such environmentally conscious shows as Ice Road Truckers, The Deadliest Catch, and Ax Men...

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