Combating global warming

Written by: Chris Wood
Can you name one thing that people do to combat global warming? Sure you can, in fact you may be buying “green” products or even offsetting your carbon footprint. But that still doesn’t change the fact that these products are made by electricity generated by various polluting sources. That they are being shipped across oceans to be sold to you to replace your existing and still functioning products. And of course, they cost more because they are “green.” But that’s the thing, people think if they buy these things that they are somehow stopping the greenhouse gas buildup. Which is completely insane when you think about it. Thats like switching from beer to vodka when you find out you have liver disease. That somehow making more things and outputting more carbon can cause less carbon. Of course some green products are more green than others. But this is beside the point, the idea of just buying your way out of the problem isn’t just a bad idea. Its suicidal, because it lulls people into thinking that they are doing some good. Which brings up another thing that people do to help the planet: becoming carbon neutral. In theory this sounds like a good thing, where you invest in carbon free sources of production and transportation through “carbon credits” to offset your polluting life style. I guess an analogy of this would be someone who constantly speeds and constantly pays their tickets. If someone were to do this the point of the getting the ticket, to make you slow down, would be completely missed. Leading to the eventually crash and peeling of said person off of the pavement. This can be applied to carbon neutrality because you are not solving the problem, you’re just paying to absolve your conscience of the problem. If everyone became carbon neutral no one could theoretically be responsible for global warming, thus “solving” the problem. In order to fix the climate we need to do one simple thing, stop burning fossil fuels. And to do that requires a massive shift in thinking about how to run everything. The power system would have to be completely overhauled in most areas. Transportation would have to be changed on a massive scale. And recycling would have to become more than just a passive feel-good thing and become large scale. But people would rather just do small token gestures rather than really solve the problem, because to do that they would have to disrupt the content lifestyle that they live.