Why and How Do We Avoid Addressing Global Warming and Similar Problems?

A brilliant article opened my eyes as to how and why we keep ducking our biggest problems. I recently came across an article by Dr. Albert Bandura that is simply a brilliant analysis of human behavior as relates to the need for sustainability, and I put it in my sidebar of favorite links.  Since then what I read has kept coming back to me, as I think his paper explains a great deal about why we are where we are today.  I have long been perplexed about the fact that the main stream media almost never brings up overpopulation as a problem, and only global warming has gotten anywhere near the attention such problems deserve (though energy shortages are an up-and-coming second, and water shortages not far behind).  Dr. Bandura’s article is deep and scientific, and not the easiest to read for a variety reasons, perhaps more than anything because it describes us, but also because it is written in the language of the science of psychology.  For that reason I have written this entry to try to break down into simpler language what is going on.  Why do people keep doing things we know are bad for our future, and why do they ignore or dispute the facts?

Is It Time for a Great Awakening? Globalization May Make It Unavoidable.

Globalization has changed me personally. 20 years ago I knew about the population explosion. I had been aware of it and watched it since I was a teenager in the 60’s, but I now realize I was watching from the sidelines. I lived my life like those around me, and certainly wasn’t putting two and two together to come up with a very complete picture of where we appear to be going, nor was I integrating my expectations and actions with where we are, where we have been in time and history, and where we can expect to go. The times are changing rapidly, though, and have brought me some striking revelations.

Southeastern U.S. Gas Shortages after Hurricane Ike Reveal How Far We Are from Sustainability

Aftereffects of hurricane Ike revealed a need for consciousness-raising in the American Southeast (and the U.S. in general). I went on-line and viewed TV reports and newspaper stories from the Carolinas Monday (Sept 29, 2008), which said that 4 of 15 gasoline refineries in the Houston area were still shut down since the hurricane 2 weeks earlier, and many others were still operating at reduced capacity, but the situation in the Carolinas should improve and be fine in a week. In the meantime they suggested people buy gas only when their tank was below one quarter full, and that some gas stations were limiting customers to ten gallons per visit. Police also asked that people stop calling 9-1-1 to ask where they could find gas, as it was impeding real emergency calls. Many stories were hopeful, but none sounded certain. Worse yet, none offered any suggestions for people to actually save gas, such as by carpooling, taking the bus, bicycling, walking, or planning out and combining trips, among other solutions that would actually reduce gas demand. I wasn’t surprised, then, that absolutely nobody mentioned any long term solutions, let alone that our overpopulation of the region and the planet is at the root of the problem. Does the word clueless come to mind?

Will We Ever Know For Sure If Humans Are Causing Climate Change (and Does It Matter)?

I am overwhelmed with the data and analyses of global warming and climate change. A quick search on Google reveals over 74 million articles on global warming. While that is certainly overstated due to multiple “finds”, even if I could find the most authoritative 1000 of them, and spend as little as 5 minutes skimming each one, it would take me 83 hours, and I am lucky to have a few hours in the week for any activity like this. At this rate, in the 6 months or more it would take me to do that, there would be … how many more articles? I hate to guess, but I expect I would never catch up. I have learned what I think I know now from a diverse mix of news, scientific articles, the movie “An Inconvenient Truth”, and blogs like Anthony Watts’ “Watts Up With That?“. I am recognizing my limitations, however. Will we ever have a definitive answer as to whether and how much human activity is affecting the climate? And isn’t it more important that we retain the ability to respond to climate change, since nature will inevitably change the climate anyway, sooner or later?

Global Warming and Our Responsibility to the Future – A Call to Action

Global warming and climate change are only pieces of the puzzle. The storm of media coverage and conflicting scientific data around global warming is overwhelming, but it is concealing very real problems we need to face if we are to ensure ourselves and our descendants can continue anything like the kind of lifestyles we have today. Climate change will happen, whether we cause it or not, and when it does, how prepared will we be? Energy supplies are a key factor, not only for our current relative comfort but as an enabler to our ability to deal with issues we will face in the short and long term. Where does this all lead, and what are our responsibilities as individuals? What can we do to ensure a better future?

Lop-sided Focus on Climate Change Ignores Other Problems; Obscures the Root Problem: Overpopulation

Many feel the climate change risk is overstated and unsupported by evidence. Among websites that question whether global warming is supported by evidence, Anthony Watt’s Watt’s Up With That website is, in my opinion, probably the most credible, and its popularity continues to grow. His more than half million hits per month include enough commenters expressing significant weather knowledge and reasonable positions (among the Gore haters and anti-government types) to make it worth reading, in my opinion. It is clear that the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” and a lot of press, some of the highest profile releases coming from James Hansen, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA, has stirred a lot of concern worldwide. Personally, I am more concerned with the many problems, climate change possibly included, caused by the huge increase in the global human population over the last century.

It’s Not Carbon Footprint That Matters Most, but Energy Footprint

The global climate never stops changing. Everything changes, even the global climate. Is it getting warmer? Or colder? That’s for the scientists to answer, and it appears that they will take a very long time to come to anything remotely approaching a consensus, which means that all the polarized rhetoric, Gore-bashing, etc. is just so much hot air (not enough to warm the globe, fortunately, though sometimes I wonder).

Is humanity affecting the climate? We’ve affected many other things as our numbers have increased by a factor of 6 in less than two centuries – a blink of an eye in natural time. If our numbers keep increasing as they have, and our energy use keeps increasing as it is, we will affect the global climate at some point, if we aren’t already. That is another point for scientists to study, and about which there will also probably never be complete agreement. Generally, though, if we are affecting the climate, it is as much tied to our energy use as anything.