3/14/07
IS THE TRUTH REALLY THAT INCONVENIENT?
6 PAGES

(AUTHOR'S NOTE: I don't claim to have the answers, and this essay should not be construed as my solution or final say on the matter of global warming. Above all, I hope that this essay will start a dialogue - if for no other reason than I personally am genuinely curious what conclusions other educated and passionate people have drawn. If you agree with what I'm saying here, if you have further suggestions or ideas, or most importantly, if you think I'm way off base and am in need of correction, please tell me. Go to the discussion page for this essay and weigh in. I just ask that you keep it clean, keep it professional, but most of all, keep the discussion moving forward. Simply saying, "Dude, you're an idiot" will not fix anything. If that's what you think, great, but tell me how I'm being an idiot. Educate me and everyone else that I've led astray.)

Global warming is certainly the buzzword of the day.  If possible it’s an even bigger talking point than it was back in the mid-80’s when the ozone layer and the greenhouse effect were the big buzzwords of their day.  As somebody who cares greatly about the environment, and as somebody who voted Republican in the last election, but who voted Green in the election prior, and who generally votes outside party lines whenever possible, and as somebody who does his own small part to reduce his own environmental impact, but as somebody who also thinks along the same lines as George Carlin – “‘Save the Planet’, are these people f---ing kidding me?” – it was only a matter of time before I put down my own thoughts about this most recent of controversial topics and spelled things out as I see them.  Because to be quite honest, the whole global warming thing smells of a bunch of crap to me.  I’m not saying that it’s not a real and genuine problem.  It very well may be the most crucial problem we’ll ever face in our lifetime.  But at the very least, it sounds to me like a real and genuine problem that has been hijacked by a few greedy companies and politicians who have tried to milk people’s fears for all the money and power they could get – without any real hope of actually finding a solution.

First off, let me just state that a lot of this essay is going to involve a bit of sarcasm, a bit of tongue in cheek, and a whole lot of devil’s advocate and “yeah, but what about this.”  My intent is not to be disingenuous or argumentative for argument’s sake, so please don’t read it as that.  I take the idea of global warming more or less seriously but there are a ton of questions out there that people seem to be avoiding or – the more likely case – just don’t know the answer to and are hoping nobody will think to ask.  The questions I bring up are not politically motivated.  They are not designed to punch holes in the established theories.  I know about as much about global warming as anybody else who has been half-heartedly listening to the news and talk radio over the last year – which is to say, I know the talking points that both sides are putting up, but haven’t done a great deal of my own research.  As of now, I have not seen Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”.  And that’s not because I’m willfully trying to avoid it.  The fact is because of time constraints I barely watch any television or movies at all these days.  I can’t remember the last new movie I actually saw.  So I’m not consciously avoiding Al Gore’s global warming opus – in fact, I’m very curious to see it once I have two hours of solid time to sit down and watch anything.  So with those preliminary heads-ups out of the way, here we go.

Okay, so global warming.  The big claim is that the emission of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases” is causing the global temperature to warm up so fast that it will eventually destroy the planet’s natural equilibrium and cause massive climate changes that most species on earth won’t be prepared to handle.  The worst case scenarios I always hear mentioned in the press are that the rising global temperatures will cause the polar icecaps to melt which will raise ocean levels, make hurricanes more powerful, increase the spread of disease and generally make the planet an inhospitable place to live.  To change the trend they all say we need to cut down on the human production of carbon, which occurs any time any kind of combustion occurs.  The most frequently touted solutions I have personally seen and heard in the media revolve around two things: reducing gasoline consumption in automobiles and involvement in something called The Kyoto Treaty.  It’s because of these two highly publicized “solutions” that my red bullsh-- flag waves high in the air.

First of all, the gasoline thing.  It’s no longer cool to drive the gas guzzling SUV’s that were so popular in the late 90’s.  Hybrid cars, which can get upwards of sixty miles per gallon, are the big trendy thing of the day and the gasless electric car is apparently not far behind.  Let me just say, I get the whole hybrid vehicle thing.  Lauren and I have already said that our next car will be a hybrid.  On a small local scale, the hybrid makes perfect environmental sense.  It doesn’t completely eliminate the carbon you emit as you drive, but it cuts it down a great deal by generating its own power.  Far from solving any global catastrophe, it just makes sense to reduce the amount of poisonous chemicals and cancer causing carcinogens we spit out into the air – which eventually make their into the water supply as well.  Anyone who has ever driven “over the hill” in Los Angeles and looked out across the Valley at that big brown cloud of smog that hangs over the city can certainly appreciate that sentiment.  Whatever your car breathes out, you will breathe in.  So doing what you can to reduce or eliminate gasoline exhaust on a local level is certainly a good thing.  And even on a global scale, doing what we can to reduce our dependence on oil from all these countries that want nothing more than to blow us up would certainly be a welcome turn of events.  So it’s for those reasons that I think hybrids are a good idea – or at least a good start.

But my god how the hybrid has seemingly become the answer to all that ails this planet’s climate.  Just look at this year’s Oscars and the interviews that took place after.  The Hollywood elite spent god knows how much airtime fellating themselves over the fact that hybrid cars were made available to every attendee who wanted to drive one to the ceremony.  Of course when you consider the fact that somebody probably had to drive the hybrid cars over to the celebrities’ houses, with a second car following to pick up the delivery guy, after which they had to drive back out and pick up the hybrid at the end of the night… the global environmental impact of that little PR stunt was probably greater than if all those celebrities had just driven their own Ford Expeditions.  Nevermind the fact that all the lights, cameras, and air conditioning needed to carry off the night’s festivities probably burned far more carbon than a small city of Humvee drivers.  But that apparently was irrelevant.  They were still saving the planet by the mere fact that they drove a Prius for twenty minutes on a Sunday evening.  Congratulations, Leo.

Which brings me to the next point – the electric car.  There’s a whole documentary about how this thing suddenly disappeared from the market and how it was the fault of big oil.  Now people are screaming for its reintroduction.  George Clooney most notably can be seen driving about town in his $100,000 electric car and waxing on and on about how it needs to be brought back to help in the fight against global warming.  And in almost every environmental literature I read, people are saying pretty much the same thing.  Again, my bullsh-- meter goes into the red zone because these people are either a) grossly uneducated about the matter of global warming, b) willfully ignoring the obvious “yeah but” that I’m about to bring up, or c) have some kind of ulterior motive for the electric car’s renaissance.  The electric car is like the hybrid because it can run on (duh) electricity rather than gas.  But unlike the hybrid, it has no means of generating its own power.  Whenever a hybrid runs on gasoline, it is simultaneously charging its own battery.  The electric car doesn’t do that.  That means you have to plug it in and use electricity to charge the battery.  Sure you’re not burning gasoline, but the electricity coming out of that outlet isn’t manifesting out of thin air.  Miles away there is an electrical plant generating electricity through the combustion of coal.  I don’t know what the comparable emission figures are for a gasoline engine compared to the amount of coal needed to charge an electric car, but I can’t imagine that they’re all that disparate.  In fact, I’d be willing to bet that you’re probably making more of a global impact with the electric, even if your local impact is less.  Look at any website with a global warming message, including the Inconvenient Truth site itself, one of the things they are constantly screaming at people to do is reduce the amount of electricity they consume in their house and office because of all the carbon needed to generate power.  Change to fluorescent bulbs, adjust your thermostat, use less hot water, turn off lights and appliances.  Call me crazy but I can’t imagine that a daily recharging of an electric car consumes less energy than, say, a refrigerator or a water heater – or even an air conditioner.  Yes sure, I know some power companies are using greener methods of power generation like wind and solar, but they are still in the minority, so the bulk of that power is still being generated the old fashioned air-contaminating way. 

So why are global warming activists at the forefront of pushing so hard to bring back the electric car?  I could understand if the thing was solar powered.  Hey if the sun powers your car, that’d be the least amount of impact of all.  If all the power plants in the country were using wind and solar to generate electricity and not drawing from coal and the building of dams, the electric car would make perfect sense.  But right now that simply isn’t the case.  The electric car is a ridiculously expensive piece of technology with absolutely no global environmental benefit that I can see.  Sure it reduces smog on the local level, so for that reason I could see why people would be excited about it.  But that’s not what they’re praising… at least not as far as I can see.  They’re saying it will help with global warming.  As I said, I’m no expert on this whole thing.  So if I’m completely out of line on this train of thought, please somebody let me know.  But so far none of the literature about the electric car I’ve read has made a believer out of me. 

But as I said, right now the big darling of the global warming front is the hybrid car, which again I think is a good idea in and of itself.  But why isn’t the global warming camp stressing harder all the little things people can be doing to reduce their global impact?  Why aren’t fluorescent bulbs being pushed like pills?  Why aren’t they encouraging people to replace water heaters, which waste energy reheating the same water over and over again, with a technology that only requires water to be heated as needed?  Why don’t more eco-friendly celebrities have solar panels on their roofs?  With recycling likewise still being hailed as a panacea to all that ails us (even though it wastes a ton of water which is also becoming a precious commodity), why aren’t we loudly screaming the first two words of that old slogan: Reduce and Reuse – both of which would have their own positive impact on global warming.  There are so many far simpler and far cheaper ways people can reduce their personal impact on global warming than paying an extra $5000 for the hybridized version of a vehicle, so why don’t we hear more about those?  The answer as I see it… there’s no money to be made through those solutions.  And there are certainly no photo opportunities for the campaign trail.  Nobody can see the fluorescent light bulb in a politician’s lamp.  Nobody sees whether or not they turn off the lights, stereo or computer whenever they leave a room.  Nobody can see that they set their thermostat two degrees higher in the summertime.  But if their campaign convoy is comprised of all hybrid vehicles, well then he MUST be eco-friendly.

And speaking of politicians, let’s talk Kyoto Treaty because I’m certain it’s going to be a topic in the 2008 presidential campaign.  The short story behind this United Nations brainchild is that it makes participating countries commit to keeping their greenhouse gas emissions below a certain level or face penalties.  It additionally operates on a barter system where countries who fall below their maximum emissions level can actually sell credits to countries who exceed their own limits.  The overriding goal of the initiative is the “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”  Sounds good right?  Well apparently the United States didn’t agree since it has yet to ratify its participation in the project – an act that environmentalists view as a travesty and yet another reason they paint George W. Bush as the arch villain of the environment.

Here’s my own take on the Kyoto Treaty.  I’m sure some of this is going to come off as merely spouting political talking points (I know this because in my research for this piece I’ve seen politicians stating about the same thing I’m about to), but you’ll just have to take my word that I’m drawing these conclusions alongside those politicians, not merely parroting what they’re saying.  Okay, so the big flaw in the Kyoto Treaty is that it’s completely inconsistent.  The way it seems like it should work is that the bigger the nation, the larger the population, the higher their allowable emissions should be.  A country that needs to provide electricity and manufacturing for one million people doesn’t need to burn as many fossil fuels as, say, a country with ten million people.  So country A’s allowable emission level should, in theory, be lower than country B’s allowable level.  In most cases, this seems to be the way the Kyoto Treaty works.  But there are several instances where certain smaller countries are being given ridiculously high emission allowances, while other countries are being exempted from entire clauses of the protocol altogether.  This is apparently the reason the United States (under George W. Bush) refuses to join the initiative, because essentially it holds our country to an unrealistically higher standard while countries like China and India get all sorts of exemptions allowing them to pollute without consequence. 

(Funny thing about China – even though they joined the Kyoto Treaty in 2002, they have since that time constructed, on average, about one coal-burning power planet per week.  Right now they are the number two emitter of greenhouse gasses in the world, second to the United States.  But as their rates of coal burning continue to mount, experts predict that they could surpass the United States in as little as 2 years, but most likely by the year 2030.)

So the Kyoto Treaty is apparently flawed (and probably in ways far more complex than I have mentioned or would even understand), and even though there are countries out there doing far worse to the environment per capita then the United States, we are the big baddies of the international community for not signing up.  But as I said, I’m sure it’s still going to be some presidential candidate’s buzz issue, “If I’m elected, I’ll make sure the United States steps up and does it’s part for global warming by joining the Kyoto Treaty.”  The general public won’t realize that the Treaty is flawed, they’ll just know it has something to do with helping global warming which, as we stated earlier, is the big buzzword of the day.  

But here’s the real issue, the one that constantly makes me question the global warming camp as a whole and makes me wonder if there’s any validity to it at all – it’s really more of a question… Does our behavior as humans really affect the global climate so dramatically when compared to the earth’s natural impact upon itself?  As near as I can tell, the answer is no.  Volcanoes spit out more carbon dioxide every year than all human industry combined.  One particularly large forest fire in the Indonesian rain forest in 1998 apparently created an amount of carbon equal to anywhere from 13 to 40 percent of what humans burned that year.  Solar flares, cosmic rays, undersea vents… Hell, I heard just the other day that cow farts produce more greenhouse gases globally than all the planes, trains and automobiles on the planet!  I’m not saying humans don’t contribute to the overall warming of this planet, but I can’t help but wonder if all our industry, all our coal, all our gas, all the carbon we create collectively is nothing more than just the proverbial drop in the bucket.

Climate over the course of history (and pre-history) has gone through natural ups and downs.  Way before the industrial revolution of the past 200 years the earth has heated and cooled as a result of various factors.  According to several articles I read, there was an inexplicable four hundred years worth of warmness around the first millennium, warmer than anything we’ve seen in the last 100 years.  That “Medieval Warm Period”, as it is now known, was followed by a “mini Ice Age” in the 1700’s.  And apparently there was a period about 10,000 years ago that was even warmer than the Medieval Warm Period.  Are we the cause of this latest warming on the planet?  Perhaps, though it certainly seems like this is just another cyclical period that will once again cool itself irrespective of what we do or don’t do.

But… let’s take this global warming thing at its word.  Let’s assume the worst case scenario.  Let’s assume that we don’t do a damn thing and drive the global climate up a couple of degrees.  The glaciers melt.  Antarctica melts.  The oceans rise.  Then what?  This always seems to be where the environmentalists stop – ocean levels rise.  I don’t mean to sound callous but… SO?  Even the most doomsday predictions out there say that the ocean levels will rise only twenty feet.  Twenty feet… Soooo?  Is that going to kill all of us?  Sure, we’re going to lose quite a few cities along our coasts.  New York, London, Tokyo – they’ll all have to be abandoned and things are going to suck for a few years while the logistics of that are all worked out… And then?  Seriously, what happens next?  Again, I’m not trying to be crass or uncaring here, but in the grand scheme of human survival and evolution, what are rising ocean levels really going to do to us?

Yes, I know we would lose a few species along the way.  The polar bear and penguin have kind of become the poster children of the whole global warming movement (right next to the hybrid car of course).  The reality though is that species go extinct all the time.  Regardless of our behavior, species just die.  I’m not saying we should be careless so they go extinct faster, but the fact is, ecosystems continue to survive and even thrive even after extinctions.  So what are the real long-term effects of global warming?  After the oceans rise?  After the polar bears die?  After we have a few years worth of stronger hurricanes and disease brought on by an extended rainy season?  What then?  Nobody seems to know, or at least nobody is saying anything about it in the media. 

So what exactly am I saying?  Honestly, I’m not saying anything.  I’m simply asking.  I saw a bumper sticker recently that said, “If you’re living like there’s no global warming, you’d better be right.”  And that’s the thing.  I don’t want to be one of those people who hears an earnest plea and immediately rolls his eyes and, rather than working to fix the situation, looks for all the reasons and apologetics that will allow myself and the rest of the world go on with life as usual as we continue to slowly destroy our own habitat.  But I also don’t want to jump on a bandwagon that is entirely false because in the end, that too will do nothing to serve this planet or the people and animals who live on it.  It will, again, only serve those industries and politicians who stand to make a profit of the dumb saps who fell for the ruse.  And beyond that, it may just sidetrack all of us from real problems that we might actually be able to fix.

So I guess I’m just looking for answers.  But who can you believe these days?  Everything is spin, whether it has a leftward slant or a right.  I, for my part, will continue to do what I can to affect my own change on a local level.  The fact is, most globally conscientious solutions have far more immediate effects for the people who enact them.  Turning off lights and reducing the amount of hot water I use might reduce the amount of carbon going into the atmosphere, but it also lowers my electric bill.  Driving less and not using the air conditioner might help curtail global warming, but it also reduces the amount of crap I’m breathing in around my own neighborhood.  Planting a tree may help absorb carbon dioxide, but it also makes my yard look prettier.  Lobbying a mega-corporation to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals they spew into the sky might keep the global temperature down, but it also means those chemicals won’t end up seeping into the water I drink.  In the end, I think that adage, “Think Globally, Act Locally” is a very applicable philosophy.  Basically, be smart, start simple and think honestly about what you’re doing in your daily life, and its impact on the world around you.  If everybody does that, the global picture will most likely fall into line without a second thought.  Isn’t that about as well as any of us can do anyway?

(AUTHOR'S NOTE: I don't claim to have the answers, and this essay should not be construed as my solution or final say on the matter of global warming. Above all, I hope that this essay will start a dialogue - if for no other reason than I personally am genuinely curious what conclusions other educated and passionate people have drawn. If you agree with what I'm saying here, if you have further suggestions or ideas, or most importantly, if you think I'm way off base and am in need of correction, please tell me. Go to the discussion page for this essay and weigh in. I just ask that you keep it clean, keep it professional, but most of all, keep the discussion moving forward. Simply saying, "Dude, you're an idiot" will not fix anything. If that's what you think, great, but tell me how I'm being an idiot. Educate me and everyone else that I've led astray.)