Global Warming is unpopular because it says that humans at 6.9 billion and counting are responsible for global weather processes. Global Warming occurs primarily due to the release of CO2 and other gases into the upper atmosphere to levels that gradually raise the temperature around the world and lead to more radical and disruptive weather patterns. The problemi is that a growing number of Americans have become Global warming doubters – 41%, 66% if you are Republican. Partially this may be explained by the wavering Jet Stream that is wandering further South in the Winter months, spilling cooler Arctic air into North American and Eurasian regions not used to such cold blasts. But also there is a tendency in North America to embrace Deliberate Irrationality.
This Deliberate Irrationality will now have to come to terms with the fact that humankind is having other other global effects on the environment for which the following Global Harmings are the classic Canary in the Mine warnings:
Alzheimers Disease – this Larry King CNN Special delineates the debilitating nature of a growing epidemic.
Asthma – another complex disease grouping with hard to pinpoint exact causes.
Autism – this 6 part PBS report delineates the nature of a difficult to define and cure disease – but the nearly 3 fold increase in cases in the past two decades are undeniable.
Biodiversity – declines as mass extinction of species continues unabated
This is a smattering of the evidence that Progress in the past 100 years has not been an unblemished product and that humankind will be ever more responsible for controlling what were once thought to be rare scourges of Nature and beyond human control. But the utmost problem is to come to terms with the nature and source of these Global Harmings – the way We live. It is an echo of the Pogo cartoon line: “We have met the enemy, and they is us”.