Man Made Climate Change or God's Will, you decide

As the seemingly endless series of extraordinary weather events and trends goes on and on, with no sign of a return to normalcy, every person on the planet needs to make a personal determination of their own opinion of the cause. That opinion will become a part of the larger social discourse. The discourse on these weather trends has become, whether overt or oblique, a choice between believing the overwhelming worldwide scientific consensus and believing that these changes are acts of God.

The danger I see, both potentially and actively, is that the large group of those who fall into the latter category may, by their belief in God's Will, fail to act, or encourage their political representatives to act, to mitigate the causes of that climate change.

It should be said that the deniers of climate change have to a large extent come around to admitting that climate change does indeed exist. They do however seem to hold on to the assertion that these changes are not due to the actions of humans. Thus their belief in the cause being God's Will.

The danger is that with this belief that climate change is God's Will, there is no reason to address its causes. Any efforts to reduce the production of greenhouse gases is seen as a colossal waste since that effort addresses something not seen as the cause, and is incapable of effecting the “real” cause, God.

So, in the social discourse, the believers in science and the man made influence of carbon dioxide production in climate change, argue that we need to change our worldwide energy policy to a future paradigm of sustainability. Meanwhile, the God's Will believers see the fact that there are fossil reserves that could provide our energy needs for over a hundred years, and see no reason not to burn it. Never mind the CO2 emissions, nor the environmental destruction involved in extracting those fossil fuels, from oil spills to mountain top removal, etcetera.

As people endure the extremes of weather events, be they increased tornadoes, floods, blizzards, hurricanes, or heat waves, they need to think of whether or not they would wish the same, and worse, on their descendants. Much is made of the national debt in the United States, and how we should not leave our children and grandchildren with the debt we have created. My question is, what do these same people think about what we are leaving to our children and grandchildren by way of a degraded environment.

We can address climate change. We cannot cure it. It will continue to happen. We have already set a course for climate change but we can prevent a worsening effect.

Something to consider is the “what if” question. The “what if” question is the question of “what if you are wrong.” There are the believers in science, whose propensity to believe in science includes the knowledge that science is an evolving and ever improving venture. We believe that we are influencing climate change and that we should minimize that influence in the effort to minimize the negative effects of climate change. What if we are wrong? If we are wrong, but our policies have been embraced, we will have transitioned to a sustainable energy policy earlier than we otherwise would have, a greater share of our fossil fuel resources will have been preserved for the fair use of future generations, and our environment will be much less degraded in ways unrelated to climate change.

If you believe in the God's Will causation of climate change, what if you are wrong? What if you are wrong, but your policies have been embraced? Not only will climate change accelerate and become worse, but there will be more pollution, oil spills, mountaintop removal, and degradation of the environment we are leaving to our children and grandchildren. The coastal problems we leave to them will be worse due to higher rates of rising sea levels. There will be lower levels of natural resources to leave to them as we continue to exploit their limited quantities.

So, when it comes to the “what if” question, I will stick with the believers of science. I choose to err on the side of caution when faced with the specter of major global degradation. I choose to believe the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community. I hope you do too.

One way you may act on your beliefs is to vote for candidates that more closely supports science based policy. Please vote.

Make your own assessments and form your own opinions

I recently had an interaction with a college-aged friend of mine. I asked him:

What issues do you base your support of your choice of presidential candidate on, and why?

The response I got included a reference to being raised by a like minded partisan parent. The inference being that following a parent's political affiliation is something of a given.

While this was a brief, narrow interaction, the point I would like to make about this response, regardless of the particular subject is, that the virtual inheritance of opinions, viewpoints, and affiliations is something that I find problematic in our worldwide humanity.

As a father, I have tried to provide my opinions to my own son on a wide variety of subjects from politics to religion to economics to the environment, and more. So what is it that I am saying? Am I being hypocritical? No. While I have provided my opinions, as a father what I hope for, rather than my son blindly following my opinions, is that my son thoughtfully forms his own opinions based on as much information as possible, and that includes information from many sources both in line with and opposed to mine.

I do not know the statistics of how closely each successive generation follows the politics, religion, and other important social and personal affiliations of their parents.  But, I do think the more those opinions and affiliations are formed by a thoughtful informed personal analysis the better, whether they end up lined up with the dogma of their parents or not.

Freedom, Responsibility, The Common Good and Taxes

Everyone wants freedom.  A much smaller percentage wants responsibility.

In our democracy, we vote for our elected representatives, and we vote for those we hope will structure our society in the way closest to the way we would structure it ourselves.  This is, of course, a compromise.  It is likely that no one agrees with everything that their representatives says or does.  So we vote for the candidate that speaks to the freedoms we value, and the responsibilities that we see as valuable as well.

Everyone wants their freedoms.  But everyone does not necessarily want everyone else to have the freedoms that everyone else wants.  This creates divisions in society.

Everyone has responsibilities.  Identifying and agreeing on responsibilities is also divisive in our society.

One of the primary responsibilities is the awareness and cognition of the issues that form our society. And for our society to function optimally, the citizenry must view freedoms and responsibilities from the perspective of the common good.

The common good has lost its place in our society.  Some find infringement on their personal freedom (but not necessarily their threats to someone else's  personal freedom) a threat to our overall freedom.  In this we find hypocrisy reigns supreme.  And that hypocrisy is seen in the case of responsibility as well.

Narcissism as a basis for voting for our government representatives not only creates bad government, it also provides the platform for a more and more polarized government.  Narcissism hates taxes because taxes take from ourselves.  It is easy to vilify taxes.  So the constant vilification of taxes makes it difficult to have a cogent discussion on any subject that involves the levying of taxes.  We need to have that discussion.  We need to honestly look to the future we hope for and realistically determine how to get there.  Government can do things that the private sector cannot or will not do.  Paying for these things, in a progressive way, with a tax policy that does not redistribute wealth towards the top, as it is now, is necessary. 

We need to return to a more progressive tax.  But in addition to letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthiest Americans, we need to phase out the Bush tax cuts for the rest of us.  We need everyone to have "skin in the game', even those whose needs have them receiving government assistance.  We cannot afford to have tax avoidance be the guiding force of our society.  Taxes are necessary.

We need the discussion to be about the contents of our budget, and how we are shaping our society for the future, not just about how we can cut our government so we can avoid taxation as much as possible.