Global Warming

Now i'm almost 100% sure the all you readers will know what this is. The infamous threat to our earth. In the past few years it has created a frenzy of environmentalist movements. One of the most famous, you all must know, is Al Gore, ex vice president and presidential nominee. Now this new hype, coupled with rising fuel costs and other things, has cause a movement toward becoming green. A lot of companies are advertising their "planet saving" methods to show consumers that they are helping to save the earth. Every commercial break you can find talks about renewable energy, getting off oil, etc. The idea of saving our earth has become increasingly popular.

The extremely high oil prices are probably the primary source for this renewable energy movement. The popularity of the Prius and other hybrid cars, and the dropping sales of SUVs and trucks can show this. But is this green "fad" really authentic. Do people really want to save the earth? or do they just want to save a different green. OK, gas prices are high, I buy this car, and I will save money. Oh, and while I'm at it, It'll be better for the environment. Seems like a win win situation. But does that mean people truly care?

When people talk about the environment nowadays, it mainly spans between the two topics forementioned, global warming and the search for renewable energy. Now I do agree that these are important topics, but it seems to have drawn peoples eyes away on things that are more easily fixed and equally important. Now I'm not a scientist, I won't claim to be one, so I can't say anything about global warming. Sure there are signs that point to it happening, there are also signs that point to it being false. The thing is, global warming isn't the only thing that needs attention. Although the backing was weak, some may remember a few years back a bit of a push for deforestation. What happened? I do not know, but now I see nothing about it. The problem is it is still going on. People are still illegalling cutting down trees, destroying habitats, killing endangered species. People are expanding, destroying the wilderness, encroching onto every inch they can.

We had a discussion in my English class 2 years ago while reading the book Into the Wild. It was a good book, I will recommend it to all of you, but that discussion is maybe for another post. The topic of our discussion was, Is there any true wilderness left in this world. We spent about 45 minutes trying to bring up places and discuss whether or not. In the end, we had to stretch things to make it seem so.

Humans have been set back disease and plagues throughout history. But one downfall we seem to have is that we do not realize that our history isn't the only one that matters. Probably the most important one that everyone fails to realize, is the earth's history itself. It has been destroyed slowly by a plague, parasite, however you want to call it. That is us. We have sapped as many resources we can. We continue to expand, destroying things in our path. Now I myself cannot change anything I know that. Neither can you. But i believe the most important and first step that can be taken in solving a problem is education. Sure you can hand condoms to all the people in the world. That doesn't mean they will practice safe sex, or know why it will help them. People must be educated, and this is what I am trying to do. Hopefully you will help pass this message on, and maybe, together, we can all make a different.

~Leonard