Common-sense facts

Dear editor:

I understand elected officials using climate change as a political tool; it’s just another method to divide the American people and solidify their base. What I don’t understand is why seemingly intelligent people like Rick Cherry allow themselves to be manipulated by them on the subject.

OK, Rick, no one does this anymore, but I suspect you’re about my age. Remember the homemade terrariums we all made as kids? The idea was simple: Take some dirt, put some things that grow — moss, plants, etc., in, add some moisture, and then a few small creatures like crickets, snails, or salamanders. Then seal the lid.

The theory was that the growing plants would exhale oxygen to sustain the organisms, who in turn would put out carbon dioxide to enrich the plants, creating a life-sustaining cycle. And if you balanced it correctly, it actually worked. The purpose was creating a microcosm of the actual cycle of planet earth and nature.

So using the terrarium as a base experiment of the planet, imagine taking the same one and now putting 10 times more oxygen breathing, carbon dioxide inhaling organisms in it. Then take away a substantial amount of the plant growth. You have created an imbalance. Kind of like the earth’s population and geography over the past 200 or so years. The United States 100 years ago had 50 million people. Fifty years later, the population was 100 million, and now stands at roughly 250 million. The world population has risen almost as rapidly. Now find places to house those people, and trees and vast swathes of oxygen producing land have to go.

Finally, if you want to complete the terrarium analogy, take a few drops of sulfur, arsenic, lead, and assorted other chemicals and dump in. Which is exactly what the human population has done to our planet on a much larger scale. Not much is going to continue to survive, much less thrive.

Global climate change should not be a political issue, not if we want our planet to survive. Personally, I think we’re way past the point of return, and any human effort is simply buying a little more time, and probably not feasible given the refusal of people like Rick Cherry to simply acknowledge common-sense scientific facts.

Noah Little Hot Springs