Today, April 22 is Earth Day. People have decreed that on this day everyone will think about our world and protecting the environment. Technically, the people who made the decree, and are therefore most likely to follow this decree already cared. However, it does raise awareness, and it gets people who do want to help the earth but do not place it as their number one priority to think about it.
This is great. It is really, truly, awesome. However, there is a problem, because some people, a lot of people still slip through the cracks, so to speak. There are a lot of people who do not, for example believe in global warming. Earth day is never going to convince them. That is the realistic truth.
The problem is that it is very easy for people to believe what they want to believe. We do it all the time, and a quick glance at a history book is all that is needed to bring this fact into sharp, painful focus. The world did not want to believe that human beings of any sort could commit the sort of atrocities that the Nazis committed on the Jews of Europe. So they refused to see it. Look at the papers today. What do you not see? Stories about Joseph Kony’s child soldiers. Because the world would rather not know.
So global warming cannot be real. The first reason that people do not want to believe it is simple, and it is basic to human nature. The terror of devastating floods has been a part of our psyche for as long as we know. Look at stories like Noah’s Ark. Many cultures have similar myths about giant floods. It is a fear common across all places. And if global warming is real, then floods are our future.
Because as the polar ice caps melt, the waters of our oceans will rise. There are only so many places that the water can go. Not to mention that other phrase, climate change. More storms, and worse ones, are the predictions for our future. If global warming is real, then there are events on our horizon that will be a little too close to apocalyptic for comfort. It is much nicer to believe that humanity is safe.
There is, naturally, a second, less basic, more selfish reason that people do not want to believe in global warming at least as something caused by man. If it is our fault then there are certain basic practices that we have to stop. And no one actually wants to give up modern conveniences. Moreover, many people are deeply invested in current fuel methods, or do not want to have to do or pay for research to find other power sources.
This means that the idea that global warming is either not real, or at the very least not our fault is very popular. But it is not necessarily anything more than wishful thinking.
To my mind, it does not really matter whether our use of fossil fuels is causing a global warming trend. Regardless, I think that we should be working on reducing carbon emissions.
The things is at least from where I am, in a spot that it uncomfortably close to sea level, that it would really be a very bad thing for our coastlines to start disappearing. It does not matter whether or not we cause it. It will still be a bad thing even if it is natural. Therefore, I figure that even if we were pretty sure that it was not our fault, if there is even the smallest, tiniest chance that we can at least slow down the danger, we ought to take advantage of that. Even if it does not work, at least we tried.
Second, reducing carbon emissions seems to me like something that makes sense anyway. I assume that I am not the only one who notices that the air in cities, where there are lots of cars and factories, smells less clean, and is harder to breathe. It seems that in the interest of continuing to breathe oxygen we should be trying to work on that, rather than adding to the problem. Personally, I like breathing clean air.
But maybe that’s just me.
