Blowin' in the (Somewhat Uncomfortably Warmer) Wind

So, anybody interested in talking about climate change? No? How about global warming? Wait, that isn’t politically correct anymore. How about rising sea levels, significantly more expensive living, increased health problems and the prospect that our children (assuming procreating is something some of us plan on doing someday) could inherit a world almost entirely different from the one we inherited from our parents? Oh, now I’ve got your attention? Wonderful.

It seems like every time someone brings up the giant invisible pink elephant in the tiny glass room, three kinds of people reveal themselves. The first are those who, upon catching wind of anything remotely related to climate science, will tell you that you need to stop driving anywhere starting at that exact moment in time, lest you feel somewhat content with bearing the burden of thousands of dead polar bears on your shoulders. The second are those who, in fact, are totally okay with that responsibility, and may even tell you those big fuzzy white things have had it too good for too long and that ice caps are overrated anyway. And then there’s probably the largest group of the three: those who don’t lean towards either extreme, may not feel all that strongly about the matter and can’t figure out for the life of them why the first two groups can’t seem to get along.

Just in case any of you new students had any doubts, Midd Kids do in fact come in all three flavors. I’ve come in contact with each, I swear. And that’s alright, because everybody in our “Mr. Rogers” generation has told us that we’re all special and entitled to our own opinions.

But then there are pesky things that hold on to their truth-value regardless of whether or not you believe them. Like the scientific research that shows that people living downstream or downwind from factories are more likely to contract nasty things like asthma and cancer. Or that carbon dioxide and certain other gases exhibit insulating properties, especially when they’re pumped into the atmosphere. And we can’t possibly forget the seemingly constant stream of abnormal weather patterns we’ve seen develop over the course of the last few decades.

All these things are here, for better or worse, no matter how hard we try to convince ourselves that they’re not. There’s just a very strong correlation between pumping exponentially larger amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and experiencing exponentially more awful things on this Earth. Now wait, hold on, I know what you’re thinking, “Didn’t this guy say he was a pragmatist in that last article?” I implore you, believe me when I say that even though I haven’t taken stats yet, I like to think I’ve got enough common sense to know that correlation and causation aren’t the same thing. But what if I said that correlation could, and maybe even should, be reason enough to make a change or two in our high-energy consumer lifestyles?

Let’s talk again about a couple more of those facts I brought up earlier. First, as much as some of the politicians in this country would like to think, the fossil fuel stores on this planet are not infinite. With that in mind, maintaining an economy that relies on cheap, combustible energy seems an awful lot like subscribing to a lifestyle of planned obsolescence without any inkling or care as to where we’re going to find the next one. For the short-term, building an America fueled by a cleaner kind of energy coursing through its veins may seem like a daunting task compared to coasting along complacently and continuing to support our dinosaur-derived-hydrocarbon addiction. And it is, but the cost of inaction will probably be even more terrifying.

Don’t take this as fear-mongering; look at it instead as a challenge to rethink whether or not we are willing to take the gamble that we don’t have as much power over the way this planet works as science has shown. Because passing up the opportunity to tackle the coming crisis head on and find a way to reinvent our existence is essentially betting against ourselves. Some of us may be able to afford that wager, but the overwhelming majority of the people on this world can’t.

That seems pragmatic enough to me.