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Might go off on an Earth Day tweet thread later today about climate change, rural communities, and the environment. Stay tuned.
Alright y& #39;all, let& #39;s do this. I& #39;ll start bluntly. It EXASPERATES me when folks contend that the climate isn’t impacted by humans. Come on. The combined activity of 7.9 billion people on a planet is going to have some level of impact. Arguing otherwise is nonsense.
Years ago, I heard T Boone Pickens asked if he "believed" in climate change. He nailed it. He said (paraphrased from memory), "of course humans impact the climate. That& #39;s obvious. We just need to figure out to what extent we can do something about it."
Now, here& #39;s a problem. Many activists have ulterior motives, using trendy topics to push an agenda. If you use climate activism to push anti-capitalist, anti-animal ag, etc. agendas, I& #39;ve got no time for you. You& #39;re doing the climate a disservice with your dishonesty.
Now, I& #39;m speaking to my rural and ag people: if you bow out of the climate convo and deny it& #39;s a thing, you just let the agenda-driven activists control the narrative and you& #39;re worse off than if you had engaged. Let& #39;s engage and do it honestly. We& #39;ve got something to sell.
I& #39;m a Christian, but no matter your position on Earth& #39;s origin, we should agree on basic principles:
1. We have a resilient planet.
2. Resilience doesn& #39;t mean impervious to harm.
3. It& #39;s the height of human arrogance to think we don& #39;t owe it some level of stewardship & care.
1. We have a resilient planet.
2. Resilience doesn& #39;t mean impervious to harm.
3. It& #39;s the height of human arrogance to think we don& #39;t owe it some level of stewardship & care.
So let& #39;s talk #3. My man @Tye_KC already predicted this segment. An "externality" is a cost or benefit that affects a third party without their involvement. (example: secondhand smoke). Similarly, every single human activity has an environmental impact, some small and some large.
We can& #39;t fully eliminate human environmental impacts, but we CAN deal with it honestly. We can make good public policy decisions that figure out how/when to minimize impacts and what& #39;s the best net positive for society.
See this related thread for some of my thoughts on having an intelligent policy conversation about fossil fuels (which isn& #39;t as much fun as shameless political antics): https://twitter.com/jamesdecker2006/status/1382792627343351813?s=20">https://twitter.com/jamesdeck...
Back to externalities. Activists want to do things like eliminate livestock as food source and replace with lab-grown meat or replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.
DO Y& #39;ALL THINK THOSE LABORATORIES AND WIND TURBINES AND SOLAR PANELS DON& #39;T HAVE ENVIRONMENTAL EXTERNALITIES?
DO Y& #39;ALL THINK THOSE LABORATORIES AND WIND TURBINES AND SOLAR PANELS DON& #39;T HAVE ENVIRONMENTAL EXTERNALITIES?
I& #39;ll try to summarize my thoughts on importance of livestock and agriculture to climate change, but I encourage you to watch @AllanRSavory& #39;s Ted Talk on the matter. It& #39;s one of most important (and pro-rural) speeches ever given about climate change. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnNaLSKDf-0">https://www.youtube.com/watch...
Savory has little use for activist agendas. He cuts straight to science. Grasslands cover over 1/3 of Earth& #39;s landmass. They evolved symbiotically with the animals grazing them. In the absence of wildlife, they need to be grazed by livestock.
Savory& #39;s discussion of desertification is important. The loss of grasslands to desert (and corresponding loss of carbon-sequestering plants) is our biggest climate change problem and that& #39;s what policy makers ACTUALLY need to work on.
That& #39;s where rural America comes in. We won& #39;t minimize human impacts on climate change with ridiculous policy ideas that exchange one set of externalities for a whole new set of externalities. Yes I& #39;m talking Green New Deal. No, it won& #39;t solve things.
We need to better manage our grasslands (read the work of @SavoryInstitute), but that requires grazing them. It& #39;s actual science. Any policy proposal that removes livestock from the equation is driven by a different agenda.
Similarly, we can and should cut fossil fuel emissions. We won& #39;t do it by replacing every car with a Tesla. We WILL do it with better, cleaner fuels of all kinds. If you aren& #39;t willing to consider clean natural gas to replace dirtier emissions, you reject actual climate progress.
