Oh dear,, you all wail, how ever will our children and their children survive such a crushing load of debt? We cannot be so irresponsible as to burden them so!
The grim reality is that if we don't voluntarily and swiftly shift to an economy powered largely by renewables and non-fossil fuel sources (I reluctantly must endorse nuclear energy as part of the transition), future generations will have much, much worse problems than debt repayment. Between sea level rise and soaring temperatures in current deserts and the equatorial zone, millions will have to relocate from regions no longer hospitable to human life. No one can tell how badly worldwide agriculture will be disrupted as currently fertile regions become infertile. No one knows how many animal species we'll lose, some of which are crucial to maintaining the land and sea ecosystems humanity needs to survive.
Oh, pish-posh, scoff the moderates, you doth protest too much about the unknowable future. We worry about people right now, people whose lives your alarmist policies would destroy! What about all those with good jobs in the fossil-fuel industry? What about the workers???
This is such a spectacularly shortsighted concern, I don't believe it to be offered in good faith. If we can't figure out a transition program or programs for workers whose livelihoods will be disrupted by the needed shift in our emergy supply and use, we will have proven ourselves an embarrassment to our chosen name for ourselves, Homo sapiens, for we will have exhibited neither wisdom nor intelligence. In fact, I'm confident we can figure out such a transition. If we fail, the failure will be that we chose not to carry it out — and that failure will be the most damning evidence of our dearth of wisdom and intelligence.
I frankly am tired of the self-styled moderates, the ones who refuse to accept the overwhelming evidence of anthropogenic climate change, the ones who balk at looking past the next election cycle. So I propose they put their money — or rather, themselves — where their mouths are.
If you self-styled moderates (and your rhetorical brethren, "common-sense" conservatives) refuse to let the rest of us address the biggest problem staring humanity in its face, then you should bet your own lives on your obduracy. We should fund a cryogenics program, and every member of Congress who votes against measures to mitigate anthropogenic climate change should be required to freeze him- or herself at the end of his or her current term of office. You'll be thawed out in 2050, or perhaps 2100, so you may share the consequences of your decision.
I expect you'll be horrified by what you see. But whatever your reaction, at least your children or grandchildren, and billions of others, will be able to look you in the eye as they ask you what in the hell you were thinking.
At least your victims will have the chance to hold you accountable.
