Finally Neider talks some sense
After weeks of reading Neider's columns, he's finally talking some sense.
Yes, we humans don't like to look beyond tomorrow. Yes, we will argue endlessly over stuff such as pipelines that won't make a real difference one way or another.
But the truth is that the human race has faced many such crises over its history. This is hardly the worst. Ancient humans back in the days of hunter-gathering would have overrun their food supply if they hadn't discovered agriculture. Back in the '60s, I remember people worried about how we would feed the 6 billion people expected by 2000 when back then starvation was very common. Around 1600 the English faced a crisis when they had literally chopped down just about every tree on their island to keep people warm. Fortunately, they discovered they could burn peat and then later they figured out how to mine coal.
As usual, humanity is sitting on a knife edge. There's nothing new. As Neider says, we can't burn oil, coal, and gas forever. But if a solution is to be found, it won't be by wringing our hands. It won't be by suddenly stopping all fossil fuel burning and sending our civilization back to the Middle Ages. The truth is that solar and wind are promising, but they are no where near ready to take over for fossil fuels. There's nothing to be gained by forcing a transition now, and there's a chance for a great deal of harm. But history shows that when we do figure them out (particularly the storage problem), the transition will be a lot faster then even Neider might expect.
