Where There's Smoke, There's Denial?

“ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer. A modest but effective investment has allowed the oil giant to fuel doubt about global warming to delay government action just as Big Tobacco did for over 40 years.” 

- Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Director of Strategy & Policy

Kristina Chew, in a post on the April 9, 2013, Care2 blog site, cites some well documented trends in global climate change associated with unprecedented increases in carbon emissions in the atmosphere. For example:

* 1,600 years of ice in the Andes has melted in the past 25 years.

* The earth is the hottest it's been in 11,000 years.

* Canada’s Arctic Archipelago glaciers are shrinking as a result of rising temperatures, and sea levels are rising proportionately, which is already beginning to effect the future of large populations of people.

Not everyone agrees on just how much effect we humans have had in bringing about these changes, but with our ever increasing use of motor vehicles and of energy produced by coal and other fossil fuels, the evidence for such an effect is mounting. More extreme weather patterns associated with a warmer and moister atmosphere are becoming the norm, and areas of drought as well as flooding are on the increase.

As caretakers of an earth that is both fragile and wonderful, it's urgent that we do all we can to preserve the good planet God has provided for us. This will mean adopting a frugal and counter-cultural way of life that is more like that of our grandparents and less like the lifestyle associated with three-car garages and six-bedroom estates.

We'll all be the richer for it, and future generations will thank us.

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