George Orr Mitigation

1. I whole-heartedly agree with Orr’s assessment. Comparing climate change to the mistakes made by Napoleon was an interesting way to bring light on the situation at hand. The comparison made the problem of climate change easier to understand, allowing the urgency of the problem to present itself to the reader. Nobody wants to be compared to Napoleon. The idea of climate change has been around for quite a while now. However, the fear that climate change might destroy Earth and, inevitably, destroy human civilization, is relatively new. Orr gives three choices for how to deal with climate change; to suffer, to adapt, and to mitigate. His article is a plea to hold mitigation above adaptation. I agree with the idea that mitigation should come …show more content…
If we try to adapt, but never fix the problem, then the problem will begin to spiral out of control until we no longer have any hold on it. I love the simile that Orr uses that compares mitigation to turning off the water in a tub before trying to mop up the water. Adaptationists would leave the water running and attempt to mop up some of the water. While some of the water would be absorbed in the fibers of the mop, the majority of the water would stay on the ground and more water would continue to build up. Orr ends his essay reinforcing his idea that adaptation and mitigation cannot compete for attention and money. He quotes Nicholas Stern who says “adaptation will be necessary on a major scale, but the stronger and the more timely the mitigation, the less will be the challenge of adaptation”. This quote ties together the argument that Orr presents the reader. We want to be smarter than Napoleon and his men, by not digging ourselves further into the hole we …show more content…
I did find the first chapter of Friedman’s book persuasive. I thought he did a terrific job outlining how the financial issues the world is facing correlate to the environmental issues. The main argument of his first chapter is that the crashes we saw in our economy during the Great Recession are similar to the issues that we are seeing from global warming. When investors and mortgage brokers underpriced risks in the hopes to privatize their gains, it all came crashing down. The taxpayers became the ones to bail the investors out and the losses were socialized. Friedman later discusses how in the environment gains are privatized and losses are socialized. In the United States, any discussion on a plan of action surrounding climate change always comes down to dollars and cents. Money fuels any decision made by our country and the environment is no exception. When decisions are made regarding what to do with the environment, the financial setback it causes the country is the main consideration. Environmentalists tell everyone what we should be doing, and the government debates whether or not it is worth it. For example, solar energy is one of the most expensive sources of energy in the current market. Due to the costs, the vast majority of the businesses and the population would rather use non-renewable resources for their energy. Another example is the cost of electric cars compared to the cost of petroleum cars. Since the cost of the electric car is higher than that of