A Resolution to Climate Change Debates
The issue of environmentalism has become clouded to the extreme. This misting of the facts serves little objective purpose and creates holes in almost all the arguments for and against environmental action.
Global Warming and Climate Change are banded about (in Australian anyway) as the reason for spending billions of dollars and potentially weakening economies. Of course, tell someone that they are going to get poorer without setting a limit on just how much their buying power will decrease and people will be wary. The problem is that associating human activities with climate change just isn’t perceived as true (whether it is or isn’t is one to be left to the scientists). The most obvious argument against humans being solely responsible for climate change is the Ice Age. Earth has warmed and cooled all its life without the intervention of humans.
Now, whether humans are destroying the planet and are having an effect (even a small one) on climate change is an entirely different and justified argument. I haven’t seen any reasonable argument against the hypothesis that humans are destroying the planet (unlike Climate Change where there is a very feasible argument against humans being responsible).
Is the issue therefore not about how humans are destroying the planet rather than warming the planet? By focusing on Climate Change, the entire argument for action becomes diluted and set-up for failure. Governments and activists should rather be focusing their attention on hard facts such as how we are polluting the planet (hey, just throw around some of the very dangerous air quality figures from some of the major cities).
We can’t necessarily do anything about Climate Change however we can do something about pollution and destroying the planet through our activities!
