Can we really do anything about any of this if, as one expert says, the greenhouse gases we've already pumped into the atmosphere will take 200 years to cycle out?
We have already pumped billions into each, with little visible effect.
By 1973 we'd already pumped 100 billion barrels (cumulatively) out of those wells; only 35 billion barrels of "proved reserves" remained.
As David Brooks astutely observed on The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, we had already pumped an enormous amount of aid and resources into this, the poorest country in our hemisphere before last Tuesday's tragedy, yet both economic and social progress was agonizingly slow in coming.
We are already pumping in hundreds of millions of pounds of extra money and we have also committed to invest a further £6bn over the next three years".
A remarkable study, published last year by Oil Change International, found that the world's developed oil and gas fields — the ones we're already pumping — contain enough carbon to carry us past the 1.5-degree-Celsius temperature increase agreed to in Paris.
So everybody is excited and ecstatic so we don't have to do anything for them because they are already pumped up and excited.
