Can you hear the voices? Listen carefully. Do you hear them now? No. Well if you live on planet earth they are coming from the United States. Can you hear them yet? Well if you cannot just stay tuned because very soon you will hear them. Where will they be coming from you ask? From the right...the very far right. What will they be saying, you ask?
''Climate change is over''! ''Global warming is a myth''. ''It was a far left scientific conspiracy''. A conspiracy, they will say....and very loud they will yell. You see the United States, from the West Coast, to the mid west to the East Coast has been experiencing either a drought or a true winter. You know, the kind your Grandpa used to tell you about when you were 10 years old. Yes friends, very soon the far right will be using snowstorms in Louisiana, Georgia and South Carolina to proclaim the end of Global Warming. Yes those who deny man is systematically changing the planets climate refer to it as, ''Global Warming'' and not, ''Climate Change''. Put down your recycling bins, bring back leaded fuel, drill in Alaska (''drill baby, drill''), forget about sewage treatment and cut down anything that is left of the rain forests....Global Warming is dead!
You know why those on the far right call it, ''Global Warming''? Because that is easy to defunct. You see, how can it snow in Georgia or Louisiana if the planet is warming up. There is no way anyone is going to believe in Global Warming. If you called it, ''Climate Change''...well then there is a principle as climate change would explain why its Snowing in Georgia and the Governor is apologizing for not being ready. Now I have never swallowed hook line and sinker the idea that what the planet is now experiencing is anything more then a cyclical pattern. I truly believe that we are to young a species to have figured out in the last 100 years of scientific research that; man is responsible for everything that is happening on the planet climate wise. Have we been a major influence? Certainly. Are we contributing to the potential long term devastation of the planet? No doubt. Science has shown us clearly ( when you remove the sensationalism of certain opportunists ( a convenient truth) that mankind is negatively impacting on the planets health. To go so far as to say we fully understand what those impacts are and could eventually be; is as premature as believing that the I-Phone 5 you own is the last version you will see. The simple fact is, we have a long, long way to go, in comprehending exactly what the impact is long term. Those who advocate either too dramatically as believers or disbelievers are in fact missing the point.
As we expand our human horizons and we look at the way life once was, is now and might be, we have an obligation to do so with reserve, humility and caution. Those who oppose any idea that man is responsible for the current health of the planet is simply in denial and conveniently being blind. Equally those who over dramatize the impact man is having, serve as a blindfolded to those who deny. As we expand our intelligence, technology, knowledge and capacity to understand we will advance. Not some 100 years ago we had no way of drilling into polar Arctic ice to see, study and understand the historical trends of our planets climate. We are now, only some 250 years removed from the beginning of the industrial revolution. We have not had a war (world war) in 69 years. What this demonstrates is the infancy our society is in regardless of the evolution of modern technology. There is no way for anyone to accurately predict what exactly is happening or is going to happen to the planet. What one can however do is predict that numerous of our human practices, over population, species extinction, and human waste will cause devastating affects which will affect and impeded the quality of future generations lives. This and only this should be the basis for mankind to adapt, modify and change the way our presence is affecting it. You do not need to be a scientist, a far right radical or an industrialist to understand that mankind simply has one responsibility and one responsibility only. To make the world a better place for those who will come after us. Its not hard science, its not political, its not motivated by money, it is the simple reality that we need to get our heads out of our rear ends and figure out how to make this happen.
We have become arrogant on both sides of the debate. The first weather satellite was launched 58 years ago. The first valuable ice coring samples dates to about the same age. So while our technology is advancing by leaps and bounds; our relative youth in the cosmic scheme of things dilutes our true ability to measure what impacts our current civilization is having on the long term cycles of the earth. At the same time those you argue that, ''climate change'' is nothing more then hype, are also constrained by these very same realities. We have too little information to agree or deny. However one cannot deny that the law of science must apply when trying to gauge the affect mankind is having on the long tern sustainability of the planet. It is very clear that our population has grown from 370 million world wide in 1350 to the current estimate of 7.1 billion world wide. This exponential growth has and will continue to have an impact. Along with this growth has come the consumable needs of its population as it relates to space, material and food. The impact this has or is having on the earths over all well being remains to be determined. There is no denying that in simple waste created has had to have impacted the planet. The rendering extinct of numerous species lies in our hands. The clearing and destruction of natural habitats is our doing. We own these things. Simple denial does not make them not so. Now one can continuously argue about who is wrong and who is right in the over all Climate Change debate. While this goes on we lose focus on what really should be predominant. Can and how do we ensure as gate keepers of the planet that we guarantee its well being for the next generations. We have entered a debate era of the gun kills not the bullets. This debate is ludicrous in its futility to address the real issue. We the people, the inhabitants of the planet are responsible to ensure we do not kill the planet. Does this mean changing everything we do? No, it simply means that we need to make sure that the gun and the bullets act in unison not to destroy but to protect.
Today, on the side of a freeway, somewhere in the deep South a media reporter is discussing with some radical from the right about Global Warming. That voice you hear is one of denial and not of reality. For this remains, Its not the fact that its snowing that matters. It is where its snowing and why.
