Global Warming Is Not a Crisis?

I listened online to an NPR debate from last March:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9082151

I can have sympathy from both sides. I dislike the antiaction argument "We can't worry about problems in 100 years while there's suffering now that is neglected", seems insincere at one level even as admit consideration needs to be made on costs.

My apparently always "doomer" perspective is the future will be darker whatever we do now - that the "costs" of change are higher than humanity is willing to pay, so whatever actions we do make will be token efforts AND at worst will just delay a day of reckoning where wer must leave our fossil fuel empire.

For me ending fossil fuel usage must come from the sheer unsustainability of it - as the rest of the world tries to catch up to U.S. consumption, cheaper, easier sources will dry up, and we'll progressively substitute ones with worse environmental effects. There mere fact that sand tars are being strip-mined shows me we're heading for a cliff of failure OR a cliff of destruction or both.

I think the U.S. ought to plan to phase out all fossil fuel usage, and I don't believe any combinations of substitutes can give us what we have now. So we need a combination of reduced usage AND reduced energy demand. BUT even if we found a way - perhaps nuclear power augmented by renewables and lower demand, higher efficiency, we still have to face a world economy. Businesses must find a way to make money, and if energy is cheaper elsewhere, then manufacturing will continue to move to such countries.

I can imagine a day perhaps when people might say NO to burning coal, BUT try telling that to China, as long as they've got goal to burn. Saying NO doesn't work unless there are alternatives. Still, at least I think people may agree coal is bad - China is an uncontrolled health experiment, perhaps intentional for all I know, to reduce their excessive population, BUT cancer and disease are a slow and dirty way to do it, I mean in my imagined evil leaders.

I feel sorry for the scientists in the Global warming debate. Its easier to just collect data and assume others will carry it. I certainly have no will to enter into the political debate, to tell others they ought to stop expecting their children will have SUVs and Jet travel just because they had it.

Is GW a crisis? I can't say so, mainly because it is so slow. And I accept we ultimately don't know what affect we have. Some things improve with science, like being able to treat water to be safe for drinking, but if success means more people and more stress on the environment, I have no hope in the future.

The earth (and life) is only fragile in the sense healing takes longer than destruction, and a reduction of diversity is making the earth more fragile.