2 posts tagged “global warming”
I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about global warming, because it's more in my face this year than ever before. Now don't get me wrong, I have been environmentally concerned for a long time, but this year I think about it almost every day. I've noticed that people tend to be reactionary instead of preventative, and this has caused a great deal of strife over the years. Most recently I can remember finding out that the government had a lot of intelligence before 9/11 that could have possible prevented the terrorist attack. After 9/11 a lot of things that made airline travel unsafe enough to allow that sort of thing to happen were changed, and fixed. The problem with global warming is once we've destroyed Earth, there's no turning back. People see it as a slow process, and nobody is really getting a slap-in-the-face like two buildings collapsing in the middle of New York City, and there's no convenient scapegoat we can point at and blame. We are the problem, all of us - especially us in the United States. We are the largest contributer to this problem, and behind the rest of the industrialized world in approaching a solution. We are one of two modernized economic powers in the world not to sign the Kyoto Protocol. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention - this isn't a slow process. I don't know why, but people are having trouble grasping the fact that it is going to seem like the end of the world fifty years from now if we don't curb current trends. This problem is imminent, and the longer we as the people of Earth fail to take action the bigger, and more difficult to overcome this problem is. As voters in the biggest superpower in the world, in a democracy, we need to make certain this is an issue on the minds of our congressmen, who have the power to pass laws and reforms that will literally help save the world. There will be a very important election in 2008, and I am hoping voters will be asking the candidates, more than anything else, their stance on this issue. What does the war in Iraq matter, what are we fighting for, if our children won't have a planet worth living on anyway? It is my honest opinion that if you don't know much about this issue, or simply don't care, it is your moral responsibility to learn more. Sit down for a couple hours and watch An Inconvenient Truth, or if in your ignorance you think that movie has a huge democratic bias - go out and find the information yourself. It's out there, and sparking bipartisan awareness and concern.
Why is not important, so don't ask, but I ended up walking home in the snow tonight. It was really peaceful - I've always liked the snow. Something about it makes me feel isolated from the rest of the world. One of my favorite things to do is to walk out through the woods when it's snowing, and just take time to appreciate everything and do some introspecting. I do that during the day, of course, when it's generally warmer - or at least seems that way, and I can see where I'm going. Tonight I was just walking along the lonely streets of Castleton, following streetlights home, but I still felt very relaxed in the snowfall. Perhaps it has something to do with the anxiety I felt earlier this year when winter wouldn't come. Global warming really scared me this year. I always knew it was a major issue but now I think we must be on the brink of too late. Up here in NH/VT our winter usually lasts strait from October to March, and when I say winter I mean below-freezing temperatures and snow. This year we didn't get snow until December, and none accumulated until Tuesday of last week. Fortunately it's been snowing since. There was a day during my holiday vacation, a day in early January, when it was in the sixties and sunny! Many people don't like the winter, and it's certainly not my favorite season, but I like the seasons up here in New England and I don't want them to change.
Now for a few pictures to remind me of summer and fall - both excellent seasons because I can be outside!
