I read an article about the effects of rising sea levels on South Florida and it is happening RIGHT NOW! According to the article from the Associated Press, water routinely fills the streets of Miami Beach during heavy rains and high tides and the problem is made worse by an aging drainage system.
I have been following this whole climate change issue for quite a few years now and I continue to be amazed at the inept arguments on both sides. Neither side is capable of looking past the highly charged rhetoric around energy sources and its effect on our economy from the other side in an effort to find something they actually agree on – carbon dioxide and methane are greenhouse gases. Another point of agreement is that trees remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and give us oxygen. Both of these points have been left outside the conversation for years apparently for purely political reasons.
As we move toward the more highly charged portion of the issue we find some apparent agreement on the fact that burning carbon based fuels produces carbon dioxide. They don’t argue about it much, but I think they also come close to agreement that thawing the tundra releases methane. We agree that human beings breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. And, there are now over eight billion human beings on the planet exhaling carbon dioxide. And, they never seem to mention that cutting down our forests reduces the amount of carbon dioxide that can be removed from our atmosphere.
I get the impression that the sort of nuclear core of the disagreement is that we can’t stop burning fossil fuels without destroying our economy. There seems to be an important nuance here as well and that is that we wouldn’t want to destroy our economy unless the rest of the world also destroyed their economy at the same time. It is that old “mutual assured destruction” argument left over from the cold war coming back around.
Let’s step back from the rhetorical flames and be honest with ourselves. There are more of us here and we’re burning more fossil fuels every day and we are cutting down more trees so the only question is whether or not the impact of these activities is enough to make a difference for our global climate.
Earth is a big place. All you have to do is drive from New York to Los Angeles and you know it is a big place. If you fly from Seattle to New Delhi, you know it is a big place. When you look at pictures from the space station you have to agree that Earth is a really big place. In fact, all of these examples seem to run counter to the notion that the activities of mankind are making the difference yet there are some facts in evidence that cannot be explained otherwise.
So here is my question – should we wait for the planet to burn down before we take steps to mitigate our situation? That would be like the little boy from our storybooks not sticking his finger in the dike until the dike started to collapse and his finger was too small to plug the hole.
There are actions we can take right now that will slow the buildup of greenhouse gasses and will create jobs to strengthen our economy. These actions will be good for our American economy whether or not other countries take similar steps. We have the ability to make changes that just might make a difference and we could be a leader for other countries in the process. Will the steps we know how to take be enough to turn the problem around? Honestly, we can’t know the answer to that question yet and we probably won’t be able to know the answer for many years to come, but that should not stop us from trying. Whether we like it or not, we’re all in on this one.
The Sausage Grinder is Broken – will you help to fix it?
Comment here or send an email: abrokensausagegrinder@comcast.net
More via Facebook: A Broken Sausage Grinder
More via Twitter: Hank Thomas
Watch on YouTube: A Broken Sausage Grinder