The anti-environment people continue to claim that the environmentalists are enemies of technology and market economics.
This lie must be addressed now.
I am an environmentalist; but I am neither against technology nor against market economics.
I've worked in technology myself, and I've also been wealthy.
The opposition is not to technology and it is not to capitalism.
The opposition is to destructive technologies and brainless economic practices that leave the world worse for oneself having been in it.
And the solution is better technologies.
Smarter technologies.
Technologies that fulfil people's demands at present or greater levels without causing hurricanes and heat waves that cost many thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars in property damage.
It appears that global warming is happening faster than many anticipated.
A lot of unfortunate folks in New York and New Jersey are paying the price for the malfeasance of Texas Oil.
Nature is beautiful; rich; intricate; but never was it ever known for being especially smart.
That's where people come in.
It has always been intelligence that saved humanity, and it is intelligence again that will save it now.
Intelligence now means creating and putting into effect better technologies that will maximize utility while minimizing destruction, pollution and waste.
The more this is done, the more the capitalism actually begins to work as advertised.
The biggest shortcoming in capitalist theory is failure to quantify nature; and it is by putting a price on natural treasures and making blind practices prohibitively expensive that will be maximized ingenuity, innovation and intelligence that are the true engines of real sustainable economic growth.
Oil is for today what horse and buggy was for early 20th century.
It is a technology of yesterday, and those who want to cling to it are reactionaries and Luddites.
Real progress - and real human benefit - comes from real intelligence and innovation.
And that means, better energy technologies that achieve present or greater levels of utility while doing less harm.
If this hurricane gets more people to realize the resolute urgency of the global warming crisis and facilitate transition to better technologies, then not everything is lost.
It is believed by some people familiar with evolution that species only evolve when they hit a crisis point; and if this is the case here, then there are vast positives to be gained.
Of course knowing this can lead some of the Luddites to deliberately attempt thwarting this progress; which means that one must be that much more strident and that much more determined in bringing it about.
None of this would have been happening if the scientists had been heeded.
This problem should have been solved a long time ago.
And now we are facing a much worse situation than it should have ever been allowed to become.
You can thank Luddites for that.
You can thank Reagan Republicanism for that.
You can thank Inhofe, Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones for that.
You can thank Texas Oil.
To the people who are a part of these entities: You are a bunch of mass murderers.
If not for your lies, none of this would be happening, and the world would have long ago been running technologies that are both productive and harmless.
And now, we have on our hands a terrible problem that is getting worse with every year.
And yet these people continue howling that global warming is a communist hoax or that we are living in the end times.
When the clock strikes 2013 and the world is still there, many people will have to face reality.
We are here on this planet, and we are here for a long time.
We must pass down to our children a better world than what we have had; and that means both in nature and in civilization.
There are real solutions to global warming, and they do not require people to do away with economics or with technology.
They require better technologies and smarter economic practices.