The inconvenient truth

If scientists throughout the world have developed a consensus that excessive carbon emissions in our atmosphere have had, are having, and will continue to have significant effects on human development, then I am inclined to accept their reports.

Ever since my college days in the early 1970s, I have been generally concerned with the cumulative effects of human waste products. Back then, the issue in my mind was more about sulfur dioxide, particulates, and radioactive emissions.

Since, however, excessive carbon has been exposed as the major bogeyman substance to be minimized and strategically restricted, then we shall have to make the necessary adjustments, won't we?

It does seem ironic to me that carbon, being the worst ubiquitous molecular culprit, also happens to be the elemental building block of life itself. This little twist of chemical paradox is almost Shakespearean in its dramatic heaviness, Oedipal in its implications, and Calvinistic in its deterministic entropy.

For many long years, I have been thinking about this. In this layman's analysis, I notice from my study of basic earth sciences that our planet's geologic development has taken many twists and turns, with numerous changes, over a long time. We know there was an Ice Age somewhere back in time. Thank God we're not stuck in that slushy era.

Climate change is nothing new under the sun, and its significant effects can be readily inferred through paleological investigation. It is commonly known, for instance, that the dinosaurs became extinct as a result of climate change that took place during and after the Cretacious Era of earth's development. The prominent theory seems to be that a large object from space--an asteroid or meteor or whatever you call it--struck the earth in the Yucatan area of Mexico, the impact of which threw tons of dusty earth elements into the air that radically changed our atmosphere and environment. The dinosaurs couldn't go with the flow or make the necessary adjustments and so they were phased out in the cruel logic of earthly meteorological fatalism. Survival of the fittest, as the ne0-Darwinians might say, though they are so terribly misunderstood.

So we understand that climate change is built into the planetary system. Nothing earth-shaking there. Well maybe an earthquake or two, but that's nobody's fault.

Climate change is happening, and probably, as is generally understood, warming the planet, and yes Virginia, our despicable human race is probably playing a role in these negatory effects. But our responsibility in this is not total, and our thoughtless warming practices may be but a drop in the cosmological bucket.

I feel it is probably too late now to make any significant legislative and/or judicial restrictions that would amount to hill of carboniferous beans on a planetary level. Let's face it, flatulence happens.

Nevertheless we, as a human race, can collectively try to do something to minimize the effects of this problem. But here's the deal:

Changes in human thinking and habits need to be voluntary, implemented through the consent of the governed.

Education is, and will continue to be, the primary and most effective strategy for working toward fair strategies to neutralize human-generated climate change--Not totalitarian restriction of human rights, and not draconian cessation of private property rights.

This human rights-based strategy would require that the educators and inventors of the world get busy--not the bossy bureaucrats. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

Glass Chimera