Could Global Warming be a mixed blessing?
9
July
The Earth concert just happened. A big 24 hour event with lots of great talent, good intentions and global awareness toward global warming.
But what if global warming is unavoidable and no matter what we do, it is going to happen? What if all the gorey details that Al Gore outlined in his movie came true? Would it really be so bad? For sure it sounds bad. Lots of people will die and the earth’s geography will change and areas will be unlivable. My apartment would be under water as will the rest of my family’s dwellings. But aren’t bad global shifts happening anyway due to human action? Is it that different when we build a dam in China and flood millions of acres of forest, destroying towns, land and history? Don’t get me wrong. New York City under water would suck, and I am not making light of the potential catestrophic results. But don’t we create un-livable environments due to our neglect or ignorance including Love Canal and Chernobyl? These have happened in our lifetime, and if we build more nuclear facilities (which probably makes sense and is on the list of things to do to “be green”), what are we going to do with that radioactive waste for a few houndred thousand years? We are certainly not going to put schools near those facilities.
And how are we going to stop this? With China coming on line as an industrialized nation, spewing out all those greenhouse gases like never seen before, and George Bush not even being willing to sign the Kyoto treaty, how could Madonna, Sting or even Al Gore stem the tide? Maybe we should plan for the inevitable rather than trying to stop it at this point.
A lot of people who are jumping on the “green” bandwagon make it feel like a trend. The topic du jour. I hope that this isn’t true, because I am rooting for change. I just am not sure if we can stop it, or if this is nature making a correction for “her” own survival.
I went to an event and met Josh Dorfman, author of The Lazy Environmentalist. He talked about not wanting to be “inconvenienced” in order to be “green”. He said he would buy a shower that recirculated water, but would not stop shaving in the shower. The biggest INCONVENIENT TRUTH might be the truth that most people just don’t want to be inconvenienced.