 |
| Andrew Mather Photography |
Good morning, central Missouri!
This morning I awoke to a light dusting
of snow and a string Facebook statuses like this:
“It
is fucking snowing right now. The next hippy that starts spewing
bullshit about global warming I am going to proceed to knock your
teeth out.”
At which point it was time to click the
little X and filter another nutter out of my Facebook feed.
Seriously, “nutter” is the best word I can find to describe these
folks other than “willfully ignorant” and “dumb ass.” Do
these people seriously think that a single, local weather observation
negates the overwhelming evidence that humankind is wrecking havoc on
our planet and that the planet is wrecking havoc right back.
Don't they remember last summer's
scorching temperatures and nation-wide drought? Don't they remember
that we had fucking tornadoes in February last year. Tornadoes.....in
January! If you look a more globally, in 2012, 10 million
people in west Africa struggled with food shortages and starvation
linked to drought. Australia had to add a new color to their weathermap to cover temperatures soaring over 122 degrees.
I suppose this willful ignorance is fed
by the misconceptions linked to the term “global warming.” They
must figure that if global warming is a real problem, then it should
be warmer....everywhere....and all the time. However, I read a
wonderful analogy in Starhawk's The Earth Path
that I've been hurling at nutters for a while now. She conceptualizes
global warming like this: imagine the earth as a big pot with all the
winds and tides swirling around soup-like. When you turn up the
temperature, everything simmers faster and harder. After a few
minutes you may still have a lump of potato that's still cool in the
center, but the whole pot has become a simmering shit-storm.
 |
| This Honduran “desert” was pasture and farmland before Hurricane Mitch arrived in November 1998. National Geographic |
Or
as they explain over at National Geographic, “In
an open letter to the American people, the authors of the
latest National Climate Assessment said
that the frequency and duration of extreme [weather] conditions are
clear signs of a changing climate.
'Summers are longer and hotter, and periods of extreme heat last longer than any living American has experienced,' they wrote. 'Winters are generally shorter and warmer. Rain comes in heavier downpours, though in many regions there are longer dry spells in between.'"
Now I wrangle with folks about access
to birth control, gun regulation, standardized testing and all sorts
of hippie-feminist-liberal-leaning issues. None of them trigger the
same fury as people who deny climate change and enable others to deny
climate change.
Last month I stormed home after a day
of substitute teaching a fantastic article on climate change and
severe weather. Loved every bit of it until I read the final
question, “Is global warming a real threat or a hoax?” What kind
of teacher assigns her students to read an article with dozens of
scientifically accurate, peer-reviewed FACTS that climate change is
real and then flippantly asks her students if it is a hoax? Ten years
ago maybe we could spar about the reality of climate change and
global warming. However, it's time to re-frame the discussion. This
is no longer a conversation asking if climate change is a
problem, it's a question about how we will be impacted and
what are we going to do about
it.
I find
myself appalled and infuriated not just by the nutters, but by the
enablers who allow the nutters to hijack the conversation into a
quibble about statistics and a few April snow flurries rather than a
discussion that strives toward solutions.
 |
| Joel Pett's meme-worthy take on climate change. There'd a TEDtalk about it too. |
No comments:
Post a Comment