Global Warming - Something To Talk About

I certainly can't argue that the planet has warmed (and may still be warming). But given that 20,000 years ago my currently temperate part of the world was 5,000 feet under the Wisconsin ice sheet I'm not particularly surprised, and am inclined to think that far greater forces are at work here than the puny works of man.

But that is, admittedly, just a casual observation on my part, not a scientific conclusion. It seems to me that the arrogance of man extends to the impact we think we have. Earth has survived much worse than us in the past 4.4 billion years.

We most certainly have much work to do to clean up messes we've made, and much to learn about how to go about our lives without leaving so much waste behind. But we have made, and are making, measureable progress, thanks to the efforts of many good people.

I sometimes worry, however, that we are a little too concerned with preserving things the way they are today, as if our environment were static. That would, unfortunately, make us and our current ways of life the reason for our efforts, instead of concern for the fate of the planet.

And if that is the case, we're working against our own stated cause. If the planet is indeed our concern, rather than preservation of our current ways of life, then our mantra should be "let it be".

Unless we truly believe that we're smart enough to be absolutely certain that we are causing dramatic changes in our atmosphere, we should be smart enough to understand that efforts to "correct" it may have unintended consequences. And those consequences could be something other than what Mother Nature had in mind.

Do we need to find ways to create cleaner energy? Absolutely. Do we need to carefully monitor our impact on the planet? You bet. Do we need to cripple our national economy to address an issue we may not know as much about as we think? Debatable, at least.