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23 comments on Europe Forum Lucerne: Energy – A Conflict Area, Trends and Horizons
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23 comments on Europe Forum Lucerne: Energy – A Conflict Area, Trends and Horizons
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Gail: "Unfortunately, what you say is all too believable"
Gail, this post reminds me of something I read in the book POWER DOWN (by Richard Heinberg)
Chapter 6, Our Choice: The Choice of the Elites
"There are always plenty of messengers available to tell the elites what they would like to believe. The late economist Julian Simon made a career of it, and his spirit is alive and well among legions of futurists who proclaim that a continually burgeoning human population is not a problem but an advantage, and that our particular civilization is uniquely immune to resource limits. Their message always has an audience — often a well-paying audience; after all, a general atmosphere of optimism is good for both voter approval ratings and share prices."
http://www.mnforsustain.org/heinberg_powerdown_chapter_6_our_choice.htm
That is a good point.
Unless we have an optimistic message to deliver, very few want to hear it--no matter how well documented and how obvious.
I have nothing against our Swiss consensus politics. This has been our tradition for many years, and frankly, it has served us well most of the time. There was nothing wrong with inviting both Rühl and Zittel to tell their sides of the story. However, the two position papers should have been followed up with by a strong debate, and that debate didn't take place. Meier was the wrong moderator for it. He was plainly out of his league.