What’s lost in going green?

This is a response to Chase Cooper’s position in the recent conversation on climate change in the IDS (“Global warming or misinforming,” April 16). You’ll have to forgive me if I find the logic of arguments such as, they were wrong in the past so they are probably wrong now, and the Kyoto treaty didn’t work so we shouldn’t even try, to be less than compelling. Let’s say that we spend time and money on developing cleaner industries, alternative fuel cars and reducing the amount of material that goes into landfills. Then we find out that all the data supporting global warming is wrong. So what? What have we lost? Wouldn’t creating new, more efficient manufacturing techniques, jobs for researching these new techniques, eliminating our dependence on foreign energy sources and not filling up landfills be good things? What is the downside here?