To paraphrase the clever line “it’s the economy, stupid” I would boil down the whole argument about climate change to one simple statement, if for no other reason than pollution we should get really serious about cleaning up this beautiful but scarred planet. Most of the same things that one side says contributes to climate change and the other side denies or disputes does one thing for sure, it pollutes the air we breath and the water we drink. We talk so much about CO2 as if that is the only thing coming out of the tailpipe and smokestack. While we’re waiting for the seas to rise and the heat to bake us we are killing ourselves with pollution and over consumption.
The whole debate has become politicized and polarized. Left vs right. We have people doing long winded discussions that are in defense of their previous discussions or to refute the other side that we’ve lost track of the problems here and now that have no political theology. We can even find manuals on how to talk to a climate skeptic. For others it seems that if we only subscribed to the “correct” form of religion or ideology then everything will be ok and we don’t have to do anything except believe in the right thing.
The status quo is already causing us grief in so many ways that we don’t have to wait for one side or the other to be proven right, we’re already making a mess of things. We’ve always taken advantage of this planet but even with our modern enlightenment and modest efficiency improvements we’re not keeping pace with the volume of our pollution. Can we find some common ground here?
