Swiss Cottage Prelim Paper 2 - Environmentalism

Current approaches to environmentalism do not work because carbon emissions continue to grow after countless warning as the Kyoto Protocol tried to bring carbon emissions under control. A few western nations are doing well, but they have trouble meeting their reduction targets too. The world is now flooded with carbon dioxide. Environmentalism’s method of handling global warming is imperfect when failure is almost inevitable. Environmentalism cures the worst effects, as endless economic growth makes the job easier. Endless economic growth built on the use of cheap fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas which are compact, easily transportable, and cheap. The fuels that help us grow now threatened our civilization. Even so, the cheapest way to spur economic growth is by burning more fossil fuel. Benjamin Friedman, the Harvard economist, conceded that carbon dioxide is the major environmental contaminant. We need a kind of cultural environmentalism that asks deeper questions than we are used to asking.