Environmentalism: the debate

2010.02.15

It’s been cold lately, and when it’s cold, people pipe up against Al Gore as though he’d said "it will never be cold again."

But, to start from the beginning, it’s pretty well established those fumes pillowing out of coal stacks and tail pipes aren’t great for the environment. If you’re still not sold on this wild idea, take a look at Mexico City.

So, it’s not a far stretch to consider if thousands of factories and millions of cars could turn the skylines of Mexico City, LA, or Shanghai into a brown haze, that the same pollutants could be bad for our climate. Doesn’t take a crack team of scientists to tell you noxious fumes are bad.

Which they did. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - both large groups of internationally recognized scientists – have both ruled human activities are causing surface temperatures to rise globally, and that an overall “global warming” is very likely.

So, if it strikes a chord with common sense, it’s backed by the scientific community, and it’s prevention helps keep our global home looking its greenest, who could possibly want to argue against the ill-effects of carbon pollution?

The Critics

There’s actually a strong crowd of folks who say it’s all a big hoax. Some are legitimate scientists with alternate theories, but most are American conservative taintledinks like Glenn Beck and fans of said taintledinks who haven’t been the same since Al Gore was awarded an Oscar and the Nobel Peace price. Their view goes like this: environmentalism is a hoax cooked up to create an artificial industry of green products and restrict progress for leading world corporations through emissions capping legislation. It’s part "you're just a bunch of Marxist, anti-corporation folks" paired with "you're creating an industry... for other corporations to cash in on!"

And of course, no stranger to denying widely accepted science (for example, the three Republican Presidential candidates in `08 that didn’t believe in Evolution), these same folks reject all popular reasoning on climate change. "The Earth changes naturally" they say. "It goes through ebbs and flows, and climate change is what leads carbon saturation, not the other way around" they say. The viewpoint espoused by the “Earth is 6,000 years old” crowd is playing science with the big boys. No, I’m not convinced.

On the more level-headed side, some call to question the drastic predictions of an Inconvenient Truth. The two biggest points of the global warming hypothesis are:

1. How much will the globe warm in the next 100 years?
2. Is it man made?

Clearly, no one (aside from the most fervent voices on global warming, such as Al Gore) has said outright what exactly will happen in 100 years, only what could happen. It’s reasonable to ask how serious are the future consequences are, and what exact cause do they derive from.

Really though, why does this matter? If sea levels only rise 24 inches versus 24 feet in the next century, is this just a bummer for Atlantic city? Do we shrug it off to some unknown global phenomena and toss another tire on the fire? If it’s indeed not man made, wouldn’t piss-poor air quality and choking landfills still be our handywork? Overall, if eating right and exercising won’t guarantee you’ll live to see 100, does that give you license to bury your face in a bucket of trans-fats until your aorta seals shut?

The sober debate that’s missing

You’d think this isn’t a political issue, and you’d be both right and wrong. The facts of it needs to be analyzed scientifically, but the call to action requires political will. Unfortunately, scientists are good at thinking and politicians are not. And then taintledinks like Glenn Beck just confuse the issue with poo-flinging.

So the reality is we face, globally, a potential danger. It’s not Polar bears are drowning and Kevin Costner’s Waterworld becomes a reality, but it’s not the Earth can magically recover from any unbalance either. Clearly, something could happen in the next 100 years.

Let’s face facts: recycling and car pooling will only get us so far. Each year America wastes more than it did the last. This has not changed. It’d take a tremendous movement of reusable bags, compost heaps and hybrid vehicles to even break even the rate of waste we expunge into our environment, let alone halt it altogether. I don’t care how many “Green” themed events or Network television awareness weeks are scheduled, you will not guilt Americans out of their SUVs, just as you will not guilt Chinese factories out of prospering on plastic injection molded crap and zero environmental impact oversight. The world moves forward regardless.

Plus, we suck (with a capital S) at preventing future turmoil. If CNN had broadcasted the oncoming doom of the housing crisis back in `05, nothing would have changed – it would have just made people tell themselves "OK, I'll just make heaping gobs of money a little longer..."

So, to get legislation and awareness on reducing carbon emissions and prevent the potential catastrophes of a drowned future, it’d seem we need two things. First, focus on the present more. Stop selling the future no one is certain of, and bring focus to what the coal burning plants are doing to the atmosphere today. Nostradamus was great and all, but Al Gore isn’t the same thing, and we’re not going to buy into Cap and Trade just because of future risks even supportive scientists argue over.

And second, a Plan B. I’m talking a mole wood arc, 40 cubits long. You don’t even have to plan for capacity. Just build it out, and dock it on the pond between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. It won’t serve much good, but it’ll freak people the hell out into considering rational thought.