IE I think ALL power needs to come specifically from...
"Fixing the Climate" should be a Low Priority for the USA
As a reminder to the judges and my opponent, The debate is on whether or not the US should make the terraforming of our earth a LOW priority or a med-high priority. I'm going to rephrase some of my opponent's arguments to be yes/no questions. See how many you agree with. 1. Scientists are sure there will be a catastrophe, But since they can't us exactly how many trillions of dollars it will cost it should be a low priority. 2. Since I as a non-scientist deem the scientist's proposed solutions unappealing, We should not fund their research fully until they have already developed solutions that appeal to me 100%. 3. If there isn't ONE solution to climate change we should not take the proposed solutions seriously. I don't think 20 different solutions that get us small portions of the way there is a viable way to deal with climate change. IE I think ALL power needs to come specifically from solar, Wind, Geothermal, Or nuclear. We can't use all of them. 4. I think when climate research is funded that money disappears off the face of the planet instead of being circulated back through the economy. All $2T of research (if that is true) is completely gone off the face of the Earth. (This is not how economies work) 5. I said funding for climate change should be the equivalent of the space race which was high priority but that doesn't mean I conceded that climate change should be high priority. 6. It shouldn't be governments that have to answer to the people that should deal with the terraforming of our planet, It should be private companies who aren't answerable to the people. 7. Other problems exist. We can't solve those other problems at the same time as we solve climate change, Because the scientists who study those problems definitely stop studying those problems and working on solutions to those problems and focus instead on areas of research outside of their field of study. Definitely. This is the problem with my opponent's line of reasoning. There need not be ONE solution to climate change. If something gets us 5% of the way there, That's great. If research is funded for solutions, We will find better and more practical solutions as well, Which may allow us more control over the climate in case the climate scientists are wrong and the climate starts cooling. Solar power CAN give us more than 100% of current power requirements easily. I'm not sure why he is pretending it cannot. I gave sources for this. The sun is a literal fusion reactor many times the size of our planet. I couldn't even get him to concede this point. We can work on multiple problems simultaneously. I can list hundreds of different problems. The sad fact is most of them don't lead to catastrophes. Diseases, Malnutrition, Poverty, And malaria in particular would all be significantly increased with a warmer climate. No economist agrees with tariffs and those can be gone whenever Trump wants. The negative terraforming of our planet is the most serious problem we face today.