It's Not Easy Being Green

Oh great, the world experts on Global Warming and Climate Change have made it official: the planet is warming due to the activities of humankind. That’s easy to swallow but hard to believe, especially when it’s -15C outside your window. So now governments and politicians are trying to make it their “priority” in 2007. That’s nice, but where were you ten years ago or even 5 years ago? Running for office, naturally. And so it goes in 2007, politicians looking to make political fodder out of the latest issue: climate change.

That’s a hard task for a political platform if you ask me. On the one hand the politician has to appear as if he/she cares about the problem and to propose solutions that can affect environmental change. On the other hand, he/she can’t shake the economic and political machine that put him/her in office. The system of democracy makes the politician the servant to two masters: the voter and the financial officer. In order to affect the kind of environmental changes necessary to reduce the effects of Global Warming, one of the two parties has to give up its controlling share of the politician’s heartstrings.

Under current circumstances, I don’t see this fundamental change happening very soon. Our thinking is the same but everything else is changing. We as species can’t handle the big picture because we aren’t physically capable of seeing it properly. Our species is one that can only see what our eyes tell us. Right now, for instance, my eyes are looking a computer screen as I type out my thoughts for this week’s column. Can I see the effect of climate change? No, I’m busy trying to deal with what’s in front of me. [and that's how politicians work too]

The efforts of humankind to change the course of human activity requires imagination and a sense of purpose. It’s a process and not a quick fix scenario that our political leaders would have us believe. We need to fundamentally change everything and consider every choice we make by thinking of the long term effects to our children’s planet. But I’m confident that humankind can do the one thing it has been able to do for over 2 millennia: adapt.

That’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.