Chris Yencha, Free Topic 1

Essentially a response to "Gianandrea Heyer :What can we do to stop global warming?", I was reading an interesting article the other day -Can Economic Activities Lead to Climate Chaos? An Economic Analysis on Global Warming- about a suggested positive correlation between economic productivity (specifically of the agricultural sector) and climate. I pulled up the article here in case anyone is interested. Of particular note is the date, the essay having been written in 1997 after "substantial revision" (suggesting to me that the dissertation may have been written a year or two prior). People suggest evidence all the time to work against global warming, but few listen and fewer choose to act. I can't personally remember ever even hearing about global warming in 1997, but there must have been a handful of people who were concerned as evidence of this essay. Now, global warming appears to be of concern to a far greater number of people while the ability for us to act as a populace to counteract the negative impact of greenhouse emissions is decreasing as our pollution becomes even more intense and enduring.

The writer of the article uses a general equilibrium model (not unlike supply and demand) to emulate the theoretic stabilizing properties that he hypothesizes exists between the economy and the climate, both sides of which are assumed intrinsically stable. Essentially, the economic system is described as the output of the manufacturing sector increases, temperatures rise which will decrease the productivity of the agricultural sector, pulling resources away from the manufacturing sector and stabilizing the economy. The climate system that is contrasted with the economic system is simply demonstrated to be naturally self-stabilizing; however, the two systems, when combined, work against each other. This equilibrium is suggested to exist only as long as the Earth may dispel heat energy at a sufficient rate. The author then concludes that as the Earth becomes less capable of shedding this heat, competitive equilibrium will limit the ability for the environment to stabilize.

I don't personally agree with a few premises that the author suggests in his argument but the logic itself is solid and the essay is well written. I'll also be real honest and put it out there that I don't feel as if mankind is having a significant impact on the stability of the environment, in spite of the arguments made in the essay among others, but I am a reasonable person and am open to the opinions of those especially concerned over the state of the environment. Hopefully I will not be proven wrong in my current stance in the future :P. I do, however, feel that taking care to making sound environmental decisions is a pretty easy thing to do and it's a shame more people won't actively recycle and whatnot considering how effortlessly they may do so. Even though I'm not completely convinced of the evidence of impending disastrous global warming among other environmental concerns, there are so many things which could be done fairly simply to help preserve our world for the centuries to proceed us.