Let’s face it, some people are either too dense to understand basic science or too selfish to try. It’s no more difficult to understand the causes of climate change than it is to be a German shepherd trapped in a hot car with the windows rolled up. (The carbon dioxide that blankets our blue-marble planet is of course the windows, and the panting dog is us.) If climate change deniers can handle a little grade-school science, here it is: ultraviolet waves come into the car but heat-inducing infrared waves can’t get out. Okay?
Years after the hellish Holocaust, we’re still stunned that we didn’t stop Hitler soon enough to save millions of lives. What will Americans say 75 years from now when coastal subway systems are fish tanks? When the insurance companies are bankrupt, and earthquakes from mindless fracking are as common as sunrise? They may say, “We thought reports about ‘icebergs the size of Delaware’ were just fake news, and besides we liked it when it was shorts-weather in December. But now, when our cities are too hot to be outside and air conditioning has gotten so expensive, we realize we probably should have done something…”
We should do many somethings, like redesign more sustainable towns and cities; cut way back on meat and palm oil consumption; incorporate greenhouse gases into major industry products like plastic, packaging and cement; transition to a less invasive agriculture; switch to electric cars powered by wind, solar, hydro, biogas, and geothermal energy; cogenerate heat and electricity in factories and power plants; continue to make our buildings and appliances more efficient; walk more; grow more food locally and eat less energy-intensive, processed food… These are some of the things we can do right now, each of which will create lots of jobs, lots of profit, and lots of satisfaction. Keep America Great! Terrific!
Humans are not the primary cause of climate change? Really? Do the deniers ever consider that our exhalations alone contribute huge amounts of carbon dioxide? (Then throw in all the power plants, factories, decimated rainforests, cars and trucks, consumer goods, and synthetic fertilizers – that’s a lot of gas, folks.) I’m not suggesting we can stop breathing but we can surely stop putting our fingers in our ears, because here’s the deal: Even if humans were not the primary cause of climate change, we’d still have to do something about it – quickly – to keep the German shepherds, children, and cornfields from keeling over. This is the weak link in the deniers’ argument: They assume incorrectly that if humans are only a minor contributor (not true), we also don’t need to respond to the crisis. What? Acknowledging that the world’s weather has gone completely haywire in recent decades, we need to mobilize WWII-style to reduce greenhouse gas emissions no matter who or what put them there. Unless we want Earth to become another Venus, where the average temperature is 864 degrees Fahrenheit – hot enough to melt lead. Why is it so hot there? Clouds of carbon dioxide that built up in the planet’s atmosphere, partly because there weren’t any plants to recycle it. It’s irrelevant that humans aren’t to blame for climate change on Venus; what matters scientifically is that CO2 – along with other greenhouse gases – is the cause of the massive overheating that makes Venus permanently uninhabitable.
Why can’t the deniers admit, under oath, that since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide levels have increased 30 percent to their highest levels in more than ten million years? That methane and nitrous oxide concentrations – even more powerful greenhouse gases than C02 – have also skyrocketed? Come to think of it, aren’t these deniers the same people who believed (or pretended they did) that tobacco, radium, chlorofluorocarbons, and leaded gasoline were harmless and that coal dust didn’t cause Black Lung disease? The same sort of people who insisted the Earth was flat? They were wrong then, and they are wrong now.
I want to cordially invite deniers by the droves to the April 29, 2017 Peoples Climate March in Washington, where there will be plenty of lemonade and cold beer vendors because probably even in April it will be record-setting warm. I’ll personally buy anyone a refreshing drink who volunteers to sit in a hot car with all the windows rolled up.
