Rethinking Climate Change?
I recently finished reading Michael Crichton's State of Fear, which I was more pleased with than Next.
I'm a fan of the author and have read all of his works of fiction, but I never got around to reading this one when it first came out. I was reminded of this book by a fellow columnist/adversary at my last job who rebuked me for an opinion piece I wrote on global warming.
She seemed to think that the book put global warming critics to shame, but I beg to differ. Not surprisingly, I guess.
I found many of Michael Crichton's arguments intriguing and certainly well-documented, especially his timeline of climate on the earth spanning hundreds of thousands to millions of years, its many changes over that time and the changes wrought by humans for millions of years.
Also very sensible and probably valid points are the corrections he came up - through a main character - for the scientific and political debate to continue in a truly helpful manner.
But several of his main characters didn't think that protecting the environment was a bad thing or that humans haven't had some sort of effect on nature.
I think where the columnist's counterpoint to my column gets lost is that, yes, things like land management have been happening for quite some time, but the scale of it these days are simply amazing and far more than anything humans have done before and in a much shorter span of time.
This change involves putting large quantities of chemicals, gas, etc. into the environment and also taking away the environment's ability to counteract these changes.
For instance, the Native Americans were clearing forests and managing herds of animals, but they weren't doing it with machine that spewed out carbon dioxide, mercury, nitrogen, etc. etc., and they weren't just killing animals for the sheer fun of shooting a gun.
Also, what the book did not mention, and I'm not faulting Michael Crichton because it is out of the scope of global warming, but that much of this pollution is also causing immediate health problems.
Perhaps the global warming debate needs to refocus toward sensible conservation, intelligent use of land and smart living.
A recent study of perceived happiness and carbon footprint, which seems initially to not be linked whatsoever, found that perceived happiness doesn't mean having a super-industrialized nation with cars and energy plants to fuel hog-wild, wasteful and/or technological living.
Many of the countries with the happiest people have been using alternative energy and have been known for efficiency and smart living.
While I hardly think that it's possible to control the Earth's atmosphere or environment fully, I don't see any harm in taking steps to ensure that environmental changes are more balanced, and that we live in a manner that lessens the impact we have where possible.
