Global warming: How much longer do we have?
We Americans seem able to handle major challenges such as wars, disease pandemics, etc. But we are not so handy at solving chronic, drawn-out problems which do not respond to simple quick- fix solutions.
After the Brown v Board Supreme Court Decision outlawing segregation 65 years ago we still live in a deeplydivided racist society. We also seem unable/unwilling to provide universal health care to our citizens as a basic human right as all other industrialized nations have done long ago. And we can never quite seem to settle our longstanding conflicts with Cuba, North Korea, the Muslim Middle East and Russia.
But the most immediate threat facing our nation today, I think, is humaninduced global warming. And we’re mainly ignoring it.
In the face of undeniable climate change we have adopted a naïve, simplistic attitude of general denial. But the naked facts won’t go away. Since the earth’s temperatures first began being recorded there has been a measurable, ever-so-slight annual rise in average temperatures. But in the early 1800s an accelerated upward surge emerged and has continued into the present era. What happened?
Up until the early 19th century the world relied mostly on wood for home heating and industrial use. But while readily available, wood heating involved extensive labor, transportation and careless deforestation with slow regrowth. But on the positive side, wood burning produced few undesirable consequences. In fact, wood ashes were once a good source of agricultural supplements.
Early in the 19th century, however, industrialized nations began to use fossil fuels, mainly coal and petroleum, because of the more intense heat produced, relatively low cost and a seemingly inexhaustible supply. Environmental consequences were never considered back then; nobody ever heard of an ozone layer.
But although an overwhelming majority of the world’s climatologists today confirm the alarming fact of increasingly destructive global warming, so far it hasn’t appreciably changed greedy human behavior. What’s going on here?
A point I’ve emphasized previously in discussing other concerns, democratically-elected representative government and free-market capitalism provide the
fairest governance and the most and best goods and services to the most people at the fairest prices. But both systems have two glaring weaknesses. They are reactive rather than proactive in their response to change and they contain few incentives to preserve the environment or conserve dwindling natural resources.
In metaphorical terms, the horse must be out of the barn and loose on the town before remedial action is even considered. And up until now we have gotten by with this reactive rather than proactive mentality. But re-freezing the polar icecap might be a bigger challenge than humankind can accomplish.
Today 97 percent of the world’s earth scientists and climatologists concur that human-induced climate change has resulted in serious alterations in the earth’s weather patterns (Ever wonder what the other three percent have been smoking?) These changes include rising temperatures and the resultant rising sea levels produced by melting polar ice. But surprisingly few Americans seem concerned enough to even consider remedial action. That’s alarming.
In Genesis God promised he would never again destroy the earth by flood. But he didn’t say he wouldn’t allow us to do so ourselves through our own ignorance and pigheadedness.
George B. Reed Jr., who lives in Rossville, can be reached by email at reed1600@ bellsouth. net.