Are all the experts as pessimistic as Dr. Lovelock?
No. Most, like Hansen, believe the planet can still be saved. But Hansen thinks this will require dramatic measures like imposing a tax on all sources of carbon at the wellhead, which would both dramatically reduce the use of carbon and make renewable energy cost-competitive. He also believes coal must be outlawed as soon as possiblesaying that “the trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.” He also advocates safe nuclear energy. There are a handful of expert skeptics about the dangers posed by global warming. But given the unusual consensus among almost all other experts, nonexpert citizens have no responsible choice except to make saving the biosphere their top priority. One would think that the unexpected collapse of the world economy would wake up humans to the possibility of biospheric collapse. The IPCC has written that man-made “warming could lead to some impacts that are abrupt or irreversible, depending upon the rate
