Fossil fuel or clean energy?
While watching television, my wife and I saw a charismatic couple buying a beachfront house. We couldn't help but notice their lack of concern about rising sea levels.
“Look, views everywhere with the ocean on either side,” the wife exclaimed. The camera then panned away so that we could see the thin spit of sand that the house was built upon. The same sea that captivated their attention with its calm, soothing motion will soon enough rise up and swallow the object of their dreams.
Hurricane season is upon us. Florida is a peninsula — three sides surrounded by water — with a climate that runs from tropical to subtropical. This means the seas that nearly surround us are warm, and anthropomorphic global warming is causing them to get warmer. Warmer waters cause more-frequent and increasingly violent hurricanes.
It's futile to note that the Earth's climate has always faced periods of warming and cooling, as if that negates the fact that burning fossil fuels adds to the warming. Consider the people in coastal areas dealing with encroaching saltwater. The truth is that we are living in dangerous times, and it might be a good idea if we paid attention to the scientist, and not those who profit from burning fossil fuels.
Climate change affects us locally, nationally and across the world. California has been ablaze in large-scale fires destroying homes, communities and lives. Areas of Europe are also being destroyed by fires. Climate scientists have been predicting for years that severe weather patterns would become worse as our planet's surface grows hotter. The extreme weather we're experiencing today was predicted by the experts for a much later date, but it's happening now.
We humans have been burning fossil fuels for a long time, and in so doing have been bringing ourselves ever closer to what scientists call a tipping point. No one knows when we will reach this point, but when we do, it will be too late to stop our planet from heating up to the point where humans will become extinct.
Here in Florida, we sit and pray that we will not be hit by another devastating hurricane, while the oceans obey the laws of nature. Even if we aren't devastated by hurricanes this year, violent destructive wind and rain will soon enough return to our shores. Temperatures are at all-time highs, and so we crank up the air conditioning in our houses, businesses and cars. By doing so, we hide from the facts, but soon enough we'll all be forced to face the consequences of our hubris.
It's hard to understand how anyone could oppose the use of solar, wind, the Earth's thermal heat, waves and tides to produce energy. The byproduct of burning hydrogen for energy, for example, is water. It's hard for me to understand the government’s supporting the fossil-fuel industry, and not protecting its citizens by fostering a move toward cheaper energy sources.
The choice is ours: Either heed the scientist and combat this menace, or continue to pay the fossilfuel industry for the privilege of handing a burning planet to our children.