CONVENIENT TRUTH, the sequel.

 

Bob is an eco-warrior with no equal. He drives a hybrid car, he recycles, he saves energy, he does everything that is recommended by the green revolution that is sweeping the globe. Bob would like to drive big and fast cars, he would love to leave his TV on the whole night, but that would be hazardous to the planet. So he sacrifices a little so the planet can be saved. Bob won’t stop until he saves the planet.

 

Bob, if he was to stand alone, would have a carbon footprint smaller than most. Unfortunately, Bob does not stand alone; you see our Bob is married with 5 children and one on the way. If only Bob knew that all the sacrifices he has taken are negated 6 times over by the fact that he is responsible for burdening the planet with 6 more carbon footprints, probably most if not all lacking Bob’s commitment to go to war for the planet, perhaps he would realise the futility of his battles.

 

The problem with the planet, the key to defeating global warming does not lie in the small sacrifices championed by the green revolution. Driving hybrid vehicles and reducing electricity consumption will not save the species; it will only delay the inevitable global warming. It is time we faced the real problem, our run away population.

 

It seems to me that we have one of two options.

 

The unrealistic option is to reduce the human population or check its growth.

Short of a catastrophe a couple of rungs lower than the biblical flood, there is little hope that the planet’s runaway population will be brought under control. The reality remains that the human race has to be trimmed to be better accommodated by the earth’s resources, but in reality the opposite is happening. Not only do we have no hope in reducing our numbers, we are also failing miserably to check our growth. The global population is expanding at an alarming rate.

 

The more realistic option is to do nothing!

Even if we did have the capacity to trim our numbers, how would we decide who is to go? Fortunately for us, we don’t have to decide; we can leave nature to handle that for us through natural selection. The idea is to let global warming take its course and trim our population for us and hope that a few of us adapt fast enough to survive in the new environment to propagate the species.

 

Yes, let poor old Bob drive that big gas guzzler, let him fall asleep in front of his TV without worrying about the damage he has inflicted on the planet, let us all buy sunscreen and wait it out, let’s do nada, zilch! Our options can not get more convenient than that.

A CONVENIENT TRUTH

 

Al and his ilk will have us believe that this great, green rock that we ride so ungratefully round the sun is in some type of imminent danger. It is the rising temperature, they say, human activity is knocking mother earth to her knees.

 

Now, I don’t contest that human industrial and agricultural activity is pumping more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and as a result skyrocketing the earth’s fever; what I don’t get is how that kills the planet.

 

The reality is that temperature change is nothing new to the planet. The earth is in constant flux, a flux generated by a wonderfully complex symbiotic relationship where changes in the planet are both a result and cause of changes in its organisms; both nudge and prompt each other to change in a complicated chicken and egg dance. The planet’s atmosphere is influenced by its organisms to behave like a schizophrenic kitchen electronic that swings from thinking it is a freezer to an oven and these changes in turn force its organisms to change and adapt to the new environments or die. The planet is obviously in oven mood right now (prompted by human activity) and no doubt will one day swing back to freezer mood. The question is ‘will we still be here, will we adapt or die?’

 

The planet is not in any danger; we are! This great seemingly selfless fight to save the planet, this great go green movement that is sweeping the globe is in reality a great selfish fight for self preservation. We are not fighting to save our planet, as Al would have us believe, we are fighting to save ourselves.

 

Up to date, no species has adapted better to its environment than man has and as a result no species has had a greater influence on the environment. Our successes in adaptation have led our numbers to skyrocket. The real reason why there is a strain on our natural resources is because we are simply too many (there, I have said it). The more people there are on the planet, the greater the need for industrial and agricultural activities to accommodate them which in turn leads to more greenhouse gasses. In short; because of our great success in influencing our environment, we have managed to poison it against us. Our activity is causing the environment to change to one which is not conducive to human life to check our growth (true to our symbiotic dance with mother earth).

 

The green movement, championed by people like Al, have attempted to stop this change. This is their strategy, this is how we save the planet; by arresting its natural process, by attempting to stop or slow down its flux, a flux that we prompted. Cutback on industrial and agricultural pollution, lower greenhouse emissions and then maybe we can arrest the warming. But there within lies the sweetest irony.

 

If our fight is successful, we would have, once again, managed quite successfully to influence our environment; we would have made it, once again, more conducive for our existence. A conducive environment means we will prosper even better which in turn will mean that our numbers, the size of our population, will only get bigger and we will be right back where we started. More numbers mean more agricultural and industrial activity (the increase in numbers will offset our cutbacks), which in turn means more greenhouse gasses which means planet earth goes into oven mood.

 

Yes, the great irony of the green movement is the more we succeed, the more we fail.