Not impressed with endless ingenuity.

You had two discussion questions that are somewhat related. “Are you as generally impressed by ‘our seemingly endless ingenuity’ as Flannery is,” and do I think that Klein was too hard on Richard Branson and is Flannery too easy on him?

Americans pride themselves on creativity and well they should. What they don’t seem as good at is accepting the reality that sometimes you have to roll up your sleeves and do a little hard work and make some necessary sacrifices. The first step to making a start in fighting climate change is simply to emit less carbon pollution. We need to stop looking for the easy way out that allows us to continue doing what we know isn’t in our or our posterity’s best interest.

We see a swamp that breeds mosquitos, so we research to find all kinds of chemicals and processes to treat the swamp and kill other things besides the mosquitos. We should simply roll up our sleeves and drain the swamp – now the mosquitos have no place to multiply. Save the other processes for areas where you can’t drain the swamp, but geoengineers seem to look for the easiest solution before identifying what the underlying cause is.

As for Richard Branson, P.T. Barnum has nothing on him.  Barnum coined the phrase “There’s a sucker born every minute.” And Branson is a disciple of his.  First, he’s enamored by Gore’s presentation and then by Flannery’s book. Personally, I think all he wants is to continually have his ego massaged and once that’s done, he’s on to find the next sucker. If he truly wanted to fight climate change, he would have honored his commitment to invest $3 billion from his company’s profits. Once he got the publicity he sought he not only didn't keep his promise, he contributed even more carbon pollution. Fool me once – shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.