March 3, 2013
My take on the environment
I have never shared my
opinions regarding the environmental debate, and some readers have
asked why. Considering I have taken on other controversial topics
such as illegal immigration, gay marriage, abortion, Muslims, gun
control, etc., it's certainly a fair question. I think the reason
for not writing about this highly debated topic sooner is because it
took me a long time to make up my mind about which side I could most
logically support.
Whenever I see almost
always passionate environmentalists discuss climate change, their
arguments are usually quite compelling. After all, how can anyone
ignore the explosive global expansion of burning fossil fuels without
wondering if the exhaust might harm us and our planet. Over a long
life though, I have been repeatedly reminded of the capacity for
human greed to drive some individuals to inflame public debate for
personal gain. Al Gore became wealthy touting climate change dangers.
Ethanol, with government support, was invented by the corn and
ethanol industries. It resulted in adding instead of reducing
pollution, while increasing the wealth of both industries and their
backers. The loser, of course, are consumers who now pay more to fuel
their cars and for most food grain products. Solar energy corporate
crooks lined up at the federal money trough to take advantage of
environmentalist-driven concerns. It doesn't appear many in this
latter industry have remained in business once the taxpayer supports
expired.
I have also been fortunate
to travel throughout the world (61 countries at last count), and have
driven extensively through every state in America. My travels have
helped me realize how massive our planet is and how tiny a footprint
humans actually make. For example, close to 80% of the U.S. is
virtually uninhabited.
Most environmentalists
naturally use human time-frames like years, decades, and even
centuries, in framing their arguments. They correctly say the world
is warming, icecaps and glaciers are melting, and more frequent and
severe droughts and forest fires are realities. However, little more
than theoretical and anecdotal evidence connects these real events to
human activities.
In general,
environmentalists seem to purposefully ignore geologic time frames.
The earth is billions of years old and evidence shows the planet has
repeatedly had episodes of climate change during the millenniums.
Each period of change was characterized by climate warming and
cooling. Very few experts have argued biological life forms had any
relationship to these cyclical changes. Heck, the last ice age (more
accurately referred to as a glaciation period) only ended 10,000 or
so years ago. It lasted tens of thousands of years. Some experts
believe the recent global warming observations may simply show the
ice age just hasn't finished ending.
It seems unlikely the many
generations of humans who lived during the last ice age blamed
themselves as they repeatedly relocated to warmer parts of the planet
to survive? Perhaps they blamed it on some greater power we would
call God. More likely, these ancient folks understood, better than
modern environmentalists, human don't control the planet's
weather...we only exist within it. Nature controls our planet's
cycles of warming and cooling.
Many environmentalists
also protest unsustainable human population growth as a plunderer of
our planet's resources. Guess what....since these concerns were first
theorized, our global population growth rates have begun to decline.
Birth rate declines have resulted from ordinary people world-wide,
knowing they can't afford large families, having greater access to
birth control. Scientists are now expecting global population
declines which will help reduce demands on our planet's
resources...and shatter this argument.
We are now seeing
increasing supplies of cleaner burning and less expensive natural gas
replacing oil and coal consumption. We will continue to pursue and
eventually develop truly cost-effective renewable sources of energy.
Inevitably though, economics will guide these gains much more than
environmental concerns.
Even if all Americans
followed every suggestion to reduce our so-called carbon footprint,
it would have little impact on reducing pollution compared to what is
added by the much larger populations of China and India as they
rapidly industrialize.
Humans with our short life
spans shouldn't waste time, energy, and resources on perceived
problems which we don't have a remote probability of controlling.
Mother Earth will continue to cycle through warming and cooling
cycles until the sun finally and naturally burns itself out. We
humans have as much of a chance of impacting short-term climate
change as we do stopping the certain life-ending death of our sun.
Human egos amazingly allow many to believe we can change the global
environment when we can't even accurately predict next week's
weather!
Frankly, I wish
environmentalist's would re-direct their anger and incredible passion
against the greedy who capitalize on their fears to make money, and
on behalf of the hundreds of millions in the world who go to bed
hungry every night.
Finally, we should all
demand our elected leaders unite to prevent the increasing likelihood
of a global economic collapse. If and when such a collapse occurs,
the last thing any of us will be worried about is climate change.
These are my opinions. What do you think?
Mike Tower
No comments:
Post a Comment