What To Do About Global Warming

I have been following some of President Obama's energy and emissions policies with sincere interest. I honestly find it refreshing to see someone with real political power examining global warming and trying to do something about it, however it's also made me examine what my personal opinion is on the topic.

Until recently, I thought of it more as a buzzword. It's like the creationism vs. big bang debate; something that gets people riled up, but one in which I don't expect to see any real answers in my lifetime. I had read a few articles before and could find good arguments on both sides, but nothing that could immediately sway me to one side or the other.

I've spent some time researching the issue some more and have come to the conclusion that my position hasn't changed whatsoever. Is global warming such a serious threat that if we do nothing now, we will turn the planet into some unlivable, barren wasteland in the near future, or will it contribute in a much smaller way on a global scale?

When I remember my science classes in school, and my own sincere childhood interest in dinosaurs and geology, I know that the Earth has often gone through major, drastic changes in the billions of years since its creation. However, time is usually measured in eras that stretch millions of years or ages that stretch thousands. It's not like one day we had a tropical to sub-tropical climate over most of the Earth and then like something out of Day After Tomorrow, we had an ice age in a few weeks. In relation to the climate history of the Earth, I don't know if what we're going through now is natural, human-created, or merely artificially accelerated.

So my basic answer to whether or not man-made global warming exists is: I don't know. Working off that premise, the next question would be what should we do about it, if anything at all? I have to think back to the old adage, "With great power, comes great responsibility."

Humans are by far and away the most powerful species on the planet. We have the ability to not only affect our environment and our world individually, but we are able to do so with global results. Whether you look at it in its extremes such as a nuclear world war, or merely the push of civilization encroaching on the natural environment and the pollution that invariably follows, we have a lot of power to seriously mess up our planet. And it is OUR planet. Shouldn't we take care of our own things?

I don't necessarily agree that we should somehow strive to completely and utterly remove human influence from the natural world. That doesn't make sense to me because we are a part of it. I see signs at National Parks telling people that they should stay on the trails, not interact with the wildlife and not touch anything and it feels so wrong to me. If some farmer has been on his land for generations and an environmental group tries to block him from planting crops because an endangered deer mouse has made a home there, he shouldn't be forced to comply. We as human beings WILL have both positive and negative impacts on our environment. We should minimize those negative consequences and recognize them, but we still have to live our lives and explore our natural world through hands-on interaction.

Like I said though, we should at least try to minimize our negative impacts and that's why I have to endorse the push by environmentalists to reduce pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and rely more on renewable energy. It doesn't matter if global warming exists, the reality is that since we have such great power we should be doing what we can to make our world better.

As for specific energy and emission policies such as the Cap and Trade program, having no constructive criticism, I can't exactly fault them. In specific to Cap and Trade, I worry that the system could be abused; especially the trading aspect. However the emissions tax solution doesn't seem to have the same kind of results. I also worry that the economy is not in the right shape to start these kinds of initiatives, however one shouldn't question when is the time to do the right thing, for that time is always...now. I am a firm believer that criticism alone has little purpose. If someone is trying something that you disagree with, you have to give them the benefit of the doubt if you don't have a better solution.

So I give the new policies my blessing despite my objections. What should we do about global warming? Without clearly knowing its impact, I say nothing really. What should we do to care for our world? Everything within reason.