Observations

Ted Turner on Global Warming

The following excerpt is from an appearance by Ted Turner on the Charlie Rose program.

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It’s possible that in 15 or 20 years we can completely redo it. If we—we have to mobilize. This is how important it is, and how important that we do it quickly. We have to mobilize the same way we did when we entered World War II in 1941. We have to fully mobilize everything we have and put it into changing the energy system over, and not just here in the United States, but all over the world.

It’s going to be the biggest business project in the history of world. Fortunes, billions of dollars are going to be made. Hundreds of thousands of people are going to be employed.

We’re going to have clean air. We’re going to have so many benefits from it. It’s not going to cost us anything once we get going with it. It’s not going to cost us anything.

Only the people that don’t understand it think it’s going to—not doing it will be catastrophic. We’ll have eight degrees—we’ll be eight degrees hotter in 10—not 10, but in 30 or 40 years. And basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died, and the rest of us will be cannibals.

Civilization will have broken down. The few people left will be living in a failed state—like Somalia or Sudan—and living conditions will be intolerable. The droughts will be so bad there’ll be no more corn grown. Not doing it is suicide. Just like dropping bombs on each other, nuclear weapons is suicide. We’ve got to stop doing the suicidal two things, which are hanging on to our nuclear weapons and after that we’ve got to stabilize the population.