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February 08, 2007

How Far is Too Far to Save the Planet?

Al Gore said in a speech on the urgency of dealing with the global warming threat that "Never before has all of civilization been threatened." If all of civilization is truly threatened, the next question is how far should we go to save it? I figure, with the readers here tending to be both environmentally sensitive and libertarian in many ways, this might make for an interesting discussion. We have a culture in the U.S. of allowing people to make their own lifestyle choices. But if global warming is so grave a threat that life itself is at stake, at what point would it make sense to end lifstyle choice and begin strictly regulating consumption? We are told that even Americans living in Appalachia are far better off than the majority of the world's population and that we consume far more than our share of the world's resources. So I ask you, would Americans ever be capable of tolerating a serious loss of personal freedom and perhaps even a severely restricted quality of life, bringing our everyday existence more in line with that of the developing world? Or would that be necessary? How far would we be willing to go to save the planet? How far would you be willing to go?

Posted by Becky at February 8, 2007 10:41 AM