Politics and the Environment
It really bothers me that the environment has become associated with the political left. If you get rid of the pundits and elected officials, what’s left is a lot of scientists saying, “Hm, looks like the trend is upward and it looks like it’s related to stuff humans are doing,” and some other scientists saying, “Hm, not all variables are accounted for, so let’s not be hasty.”
Unfortunately for the earth, Al Gore took an interest in its long-term well-being, and now every time it snows people say, “What the hell happened to global warming!? LOL ROFL.” Comments like that are the reason the terminology shifted to “Global climate change,” because people take the phrase hyper-literally and complain about temperature drops when the sun sets.
The most irritating part, though, is the weird attitude that comes out of the whole anti-global-warming movement. It’s like this: We pollute the earth. Other effects of pollution, like acid rain, weird fish, and other such things, are widely documented. Yet, people say, “Okay, this isn’t causing global warming, so let’s not bother cleaning up.” That is why I get pissed off when I see the snarky comments on the social networking sites. I don’t understand why the issue of global warming is the determining factor in people’s minds when it comes to whether we should use less paper or switch to energy-efficient light bulbs. It seems like a no-brainer — we’re doing stuff that has harmful effects, so let’s figure out a way not to. Whether it ultimately affects the temperature of the earth is kind of irrelevant.
I mean, really, aspartame might not cause brain cancer, but fresh fruits and vegetables are still better and I should eat more of them. Yet, if I were to follow the logic of the anti-global-warming team, I would continue to drink diet pop and not eat healthy foods because the only factor I cared about was the brain cancer.
From my perspective, it just seems to be based on political alignment. Liberals automatically accept that global warming is a fact, and conservatives automatically reject it. Then they insult each other. Since I basically hate politics, I’m having a hard time picking a side.
I’m not a scientist. I don’t study the raw data. I can’t really say one way or another whether we’re heating up the world or not. I just don’t understand why a single issue is getting so many people so worked up when there are a ton of real environmental issues out there. Maybe I’m just weird, but I don’t like the idea of drinking polluted water…
