November 20, 2015 - 16:13
Argument VS Action
Global Warming and Climate change are often thought of as being synonyms. In actual reality, global warming is the cause of climate change. Humans cause greenhouse gas emissions that lead to global warming, and global warming is the cause of droughts, tornadoes, and other extreme weather. Despite this hard science, there is controversy attached to global warming and climate change. The only proof anyone needs to prove that climate change is happening is opening their eyes and looking outside. Global warming and climate change are controversial, indeed, but where the controversy starts is whether or not humans started it. Where the controversy should end is in resolving the issue.
In The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway portray a fictional depiction of what the world will be like if we continue to argue over the existence of climate change, instead of trying to fix it. This idea that ignoring climate change will make it go away is fully ridiculous, and according to this fictional yet scientific book we see the real consequences. Soaring temperatures, rising sea levels,and widespread drought are just a few of the impending disasters on our world. These consequences are already ever-present in 2015. Barack Obama just recently passed the Clean Air Act. The Clean Air Act is an act set up to reduce greenhouse emissions. Many states are for this, usually the more democratic states than the conservative. This sets up a sort of war on those states who are economically dependent on fossil fuels and those already suffering from the effects of global warming. Though this act is meant to set the United States to be more environmentally friendly it is still brought up in media and in conversation as something that will harm the economy. Many people tend to focus more on the economy than they do on the state of our world, this is what Oreskes and Conway are calling the downfall of Western Civilization.
One of the main criticisms that Oreskes and Conway have on modern science is the 95 percent confidence level. The confidence level refers to the fact that scientists won’t make any call for an action or causation until they are 95 percent confident. They are extremely critical of this confidence interval because they think that each situation has to be based on a different merit. If we ban tobacco for being dangerously addictive are we going to ban soda too? The same goes for science and climate change. Oreskes argues that it is time for scientists to change their standards, because it’s wrong not to look at each situation and place separate standards for them. Human error caused climate change in the first place. We used too many fossil fuels and now we are suffering from the consequences of that. We are in a new era, The Anthropocene Era, the period in which human activity is the most dominant influence on the climate and the environment. Scientists have already labeled us as the greatest contributors to global warming. It is hard to believe that we are caught up in the idea that we did not cause it.
Instead of getting caught up in arguments of who started climate change, we should be having conversations on how we should fix it. There are scientists who have begun thinking about ways in which we can help stop climate change. Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction, believes that there are two choices when approaching climate change. We could take preventative measures and deal with the causes before it gets out of hand. Or we could take a reconstructive path, where we would deal with the consequences after the event happens. Oreskes and Conway argue that preventative measures or the precautionary principle is “moot.” Conway states “Precautions are taken in advance of damage, not after it has already begun. We have overwhelming evidence that we’ve already triggered a rapid rate of oceanic and atmospheric warming. We’re currently reacting to climate change already in progress, not deploying precautions against warming that might or might not happen in the future.” Conway is right, we have already triggered climate change and what we do right now is only combating what we have already caused, not preventing it. The other argument of reconstruction does not seem valid if we let climate change happen and get to a point where we must reconstruct it will be the end of western civilization. Just as described in Oreskes’ and Conway’s book.
We should start now, we may not be able to prevent climate change, or stop it fully, but we can work on repairing the damage that we have done. Van Jones an environmental activist, is working on an environmental initiative that provides jobs for people who live in poverty, as well as people who recently got out of prison, and high school dropouts. Van jones not only gives a way in which we can help solve the issue of poverty and unemployment but provides us with a way in which we can also save the environment. I think we should take a similar approach to Van Jones, in that we should try to work with the government instead of completely try to rebel against it. There are green initiatives all over that help many people try to lessen their carbon footprint through many of these green initiatives are often nonprofit organizations. If we put half of the money, time, and effort in arguing that Global Warming does not exist we would be making a bigger change in this world.