Why Climate Change Could be the Best Thing that's Happened to America. Part 1

I've been wanting to write this for a long time. Actually, I've written it about a dozen times, but I never felt it was right. Sometimes it was too preachy, others it was just way too cluttered with information. Like I've always said about progressives: they have a very hard time getting across their message. Republicans are good. They announce they're going to lower taxes and kill terrorists. Neither may happen, but dammit at least they say it. Democrats stifle their message in the slow death spiral of overwhelming data. You'll hear it all the time. As in the instance of Climate Change, someone who does not believe it is occurring will say, "There was snow in my backyard this morning. What do you say about that?" Meanwhile, the environmentalist is inducing comas with a dissertation on atmospheric calculations. So I'm going to do my best to keep these short and sweet and relevant. If I stray, then punch me in the comment section.

I firmly believe that Climate Change (and I'm going to capitalize that shit because it's a goddamned monster) is the most challenging battle the human race has ever faced. It's not going to be easy because we rely so much on the agents that are altering our planet's atmosphere. I can't imagine having to pull a rickshaw to get the kids to school, and I'm not sure I'd like a world where can't light up a fireplace. Luckily, what we have to do isn't that extreme. Frighteningly, what we have to do needs to happen now.

The good news is that everything we need to do to maintain our planet for our children are things that we should be doing anyway. Even better, they are the things that will make us better. From personal gain to national independence, fighting Climate Change is a win/win. AND we can still kill terrorists.

Sometimes I wonder if it were all reversed. If we'd been able to start with renewable energy and then later someone stumbled across some oil. He'd have to pitch some investors on the idea of using it instead of wind and solar. "We'll have to engage in nonstop military intervention in faraway places," he'd begin. "We'll have to prop up a lot of bad guys, too, before spending trillions deposing them. There will be a lot of health issues; kids with asthma, increased cancers, and some desperate poor people in the Niger Delta will literally melt when it explodes."

There would be pause. I can hear a Christian objection of pumping black bile from the hellish depths of Earth and setting it on fire. And if the petroleum pitchman added, "Oh, and there's also this thing about the earth's entire climate changing and creating the single largest challenge the human race has ever faced," they would drag him out of the room. Oil, it would be determined, was not a good alternative. Besides, we didn't even have the infrastructure to make it happen.

It's funny, because that's about the only complaint we have today about moving to renewable energy. If we look to the future, solar energy doesn't come with children being blown up in Iraq or Americans dying in distant places all over the planet. There's nothing cancer-causing about wind and it seems that the biggest side effect of capturing energy from ocean waves is that you might have to relocate your family to the beach. I mean things look really good, but we're stuck on this infrastructure thing.

That's like not taking an awesome promotion because you don't have the right shoes. People every day go out and make the changes necessary to adapt to their lives, yet we seem to refuse, offering up this ugly scenario where for the first time in human history we're ignoring the adaptation necessary for the survival of the species. That's kind of embarrassing. I know my dog expects more of me.

I think about my grandparents who rationed, carpooled and grew their own food because of the growing specter of WWII. They did what was right for the greater good. The greater good...which seems like a great idea and is befuddling as to why we wouldn't do it again. Why wouldn't we all pitch in and make a change, many of them very simple and healthy choices, to help save the environment that sustains us? Well, according to recent reports, America is less about the greater good and more inclined to satisfy the individual. (I'm not sure if God would bless a country like that...but...I digress.) We're of an independent spirit and doing our own thing. It's what built America some have argued.

So what was my grandma rationing sugar for the troops? It seems like there was a realization that if you were only to look out for yourself, than you were threatening the country. Today, like in 1940, it is again the Department of Defense that is warning us about the dire consequences of our newest enemy. But this time it isn't the Germans or the Japanese. It is us. But I believe that we all have a desire to not die in a ridiculous superstorm and that we already have the solutions to curb climate change. Even better, we can fight the good fight on our own terms, and we can even do it through a rugged individualism that will, ironically, create a stronger sense of community.