What do you think are the biggest problems of modern society?

[Badassbab]

Kasz216 said:

Badassbab said:

radishhead said:
Sometimes you've got to wonder how sustainable our way of living is

It's not.

There are three train of thoughts based on the environmental problems we are facing-

1. We don't have much time and need to act fast and reverse all the damage we've done. This is the main school of though amongst mainstream scientists.

2. It's all a faux green movement/one world Government conspriracy to reduce the worlds population. This is the second most popular theory not really amongst scientists but amongst the Alex Jones conspiracy theory type and the right wing pro business only/ christian fundamentalist type. i.e God told Noah there won't be any more floods so Global Warming can't cause sea levels to rise.

3. It's much worse than even the mainstream scientists are saying and we are periously close to extinction if we don't act now. Most life on earth goes extinct at some point, humans are no different except it's self imposed.

Your forgetting one.

4. Something needs to be done... (probably) but in general claims aren't as bad as can be expected as results ALWAYS seem to GREATLY underperfom just about any publisized climate model and in general the current proposals will cost more wealth in lost development then later better techniques would like geoengineering... general panic being caused by models that haven't really panned out with reality yet.

See Super Freakanomics as an example or...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203646004577213244084429540.html?mod=googlenews_wsj#

Yeah missed out that group. Also there's the The Global Warming is happening but it's due to the Earths natural cycle and next to nothing to do with Co2 emissions brigade. 

Most evidence I've come across tend to say human industrial activity is causing the Earths temperature to rise and as far as prediction models go they tend to be fairly accurate though as your graph shows with regards to actual rise in temperatures it's a bit hit and miss. This can be partially put down to not correctly predicting how fast or slow the world as a whole is industrialisng, using more or less fossil fuels, switch to renewable energy sources etc. Since the world is not in sync with regards to combatting climate change one day and another time it is, one can assume such predictions will continue to vary in accuracy.

About what needs to be done, well unfortuantely I don't think there's too much choice, action has to be taken now rather than wait and hope for some fancy new tech to come along. The emerging economies don't want to invest in expensive cleaner fuels yet until they develop their economies arguing most of the greenhouse gases were caused by Western Countries while the West doesn't want to invest in cleaner fuels unless the emerging economies do as well lest they put themselves at an economic disadvantage. It requires strong political will from all the major players to form a united front, just remains to be seen if the worlds politicians can think more about the human species as a whole rather than growing their own countries economies.

Most countries are taking some kind of rudimentary actions like more recycling takes places and less plastic bags are used while other countries such as Denmark actually have a plan in place to go completely renewable in a few decades time.