Climate change is such a frustrating topic for me to talk about, on so many levels, because a lot of the issues surrounding the subject don’t make sense. The reason it doesn’t make sense is that in the face of overwhelming evidence of our impending doom, there are still many that can’t agree that this phenomenon even exists, let alone do something about it. There are so many climate change deniers — it boggles the mind at how selfish some of us are when it comes to saving ourselves. For far too long, this notion that climate change is a farce, a lie, or a naturally occurring event has been debunked by almost all respectable scientists, and yet the fallacies still persist. The main issue that bothers me the most is that we have the means, the technology, and the ability to combat climate change RIGHT NOW, yet special interests, money, power, corruption and other individual short term goals/expectations have prevented us, as society from enacting the methods, policies, and technologies required, on a global scale, to reverse possible extinction level events in the future.
Money and power have always been humanity’s problem ever since the industrial revolution. Sacrificing the long-term benefits for the population and instead favoring the short term maintenance of the fossil-fuel industry to maintain wealth. You don’t even have to believe the politicians or scientists, simply look out your window, or turn on the TV. Even as the evidence mounts, our coastal territories and cities are increasingly damaged with more frequency and severity by every hurricane season which is worse than the previous one. 100 year floods now occur every other year, drought has persisted in our Western regions for years, sea-level rise causes flooding on bright sunshiny days in low lying areas and record setting temperatures in the summer our summers scorch large regions nationwide every year. We are not doing nearly enough to mitigate these occurrences and save our children and our children’s children.
When will it be enough? What has to happen for us as a people, to learn to preserve our future over selfish interest? There have been some efforts globally, such as the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015, and some companies, businesses, and manufacturers have decided to become greener, but much more needs to be done. If we put our collective innovation, common goals and ideas together, we could build a better society to incorporate emerging sustainable technologies and enact policies that wouldn’t sacrifice jobs, but work with the environment and learn to teach a new generation to coexist with nature rather than destroy it. We are literally biting the hand that feeds us, burning the barn down while still being inside. Insert whatever euphemism you deem appropriate, but until we learn to put people before country, profits before global health, country before party and life over death, we will continue to live on borrowed time. Father time and mother nature will eventually take back the beautiful gifts of life that they have bestowed upon humanity.
