Wherefore Art Thou, Pollution?

With all this talk recently about carbon emissions and global warming, I often wonder whatever happened to good ol' pollution. It seems like "global warming" (or "climate change") is starting to find a home right up there with abortion and gay marriage, as far as hot-button issues go. People like Sheryl Crow step forward in support of reducing Global Warming, and they get criticized by others for their "oddball" ideas. Al Gore gets vilified by people on both sides of the issue for either being too sensational or for not being sensational enough. Point is, talking about the environment these days is a sure way to stir the pot, get some debate going, and, if you've got your fingers in the right pies, make some money.

So what ever happened to plain old pollution? When I was younger, I remember everyone talking about (and agreeing on) the need for recycling, and for spitting less nasty stuff into the air and water around us. No one said that creating trash was good, or that we would all benefit from having dirty, unbreathable air. It was a given that things needed to change, and, looking back, I suppose it was probably a pretty optimistic time. At least, it could have been. But it led to the debates we have today, about whether our actions on this planet are truly having an impact on this mythical global-warming thing, or if celebrities are jumping on the green bandwagon simply because it's the new thing. Why did this happen? When did the issue change?

Do we just love to debate things that much? Would we rather talk about how to solve problems than actually solve them? This is how I see it, how I have always seen it, and how I will continue to see it no matter what "evidence" is discovered or dispelled: The world can be a beautiful place, and I don't want to screw that up. Given the choice between looking at a brown sky every morning, or a crystal-clear blue sky, I know which choice I would make. I hope everyone else would make the same choice.

Imagine you're a dog living in a backyard. Never mind who's backyard it is, that's not the issue here. For all you know, it is your backyard and yours alone. It is your domain. And a wonderful domain it is. It's full of the greenest grass, speckled with purple flowers, and shaded by a hearty helping of leaves overhead. It's cool in the summer and warm in the winter, and you have no complaints.

And one of the best parts of this realm of yours is that you are free; you can wander where you want to, sleep where you want to, eat whatever you want to, and relieve yourself wherever you want to. This works out great, for a few days. But it doesn't take long before you start to realize that your freedom is starting to cost you. You've taken liberties and treated the entire yard as a toilet, and now the green grass is turning brown in places. Your food--mostly bugs and flowers--doesn't thrive so much anymore. It's becoming harder and harder to find clean places to lie down. It's not such a paradise anymore.

After a few weeks, almost the entire yard is brown and dead. The flowers have been replaced by weeds, and bugs have been replaced by flies and dung beetles. You can still eat them all, but the taste is pretty awful. You miss your old foods. Even worse, the health of your domain has become so bad that the trees that provided such great shade have begun to die, their leaves shrivel, and now the sun beats down on you with no respite.

I don't think I need to keep this analogy going any longer to make my point. Clearly, even though you can still live in the yard, it is not what it used to be. It's no longer a wonderful paradise. As such, your quality of life has decreased. And it's all because of your own irresponsibility. One major difference between this story and our real world--besides the obvious--is that the dog is limited in it's ability to undo the damage it does. As humans, we thankfully are in a position to stop destroying our environment--if we want to. If we can just stop talking about it ad nauseum.

Notice there was nothing in the analogy about all life dying in the yard, or about the yard becoming a barren wasteland of ice. The dog will survive. He'll just have to get used to a very different life; a life less-charmed; for lack of a better term, an ugly life.

That's what I want to avoid. I want beauty to surround me, and everyone else on the Earth. I want peoples in other countries to be able to look up at the sky and not see the effects of our carelessness.

Let's stop talking about global warming, and whether or not we are responsible. We may or may not be the cause, but I do believe we can be the cure. What is more important, to be right, or to be happy?

MPG Consciousness

One of the most beneficial aspects of driving a hybrid (so I've read) is that they come with nifty little gauges that tell you what your fuel economy is in real-time. As you're driving you get to see how different circumstances affect your miles-per-gallon. In a regular ol' car, you don't get that luxury--excepting some of the higher-end or just more forward-thinking models.

You always hear people talk about different things you can do to reduce your fuel consumption, such as driving at certain speeds, refraining from using the A/C, keeping your tires inflated to the right level, etc., but what has come to be an annoyance to me is that it's all just speculation for me. I don't have the patients or memory capacity to keep a tally of my mileage every time I fill up the car, and then try to remember what things I did since the last fill-up that might have made a difference.

Thankfully, as always, technology saves the day. I found an aftermarket device, call the ScanGauge II, that can be connected directly into your cars on-board computer and give you real-time data readings on your MPG's, plus a whole host of other potentially useful information. Mainly I'm interested in the fuel economy, though, because I do think that seeing how much your using at any given time can go a long way to changing your driving habits. Perhaps that's why most auto-manufacturers don't bother including them in the cars already? The info is already there, after all, because the only thing this gauge does is provide a readout--it doesn't make calculations itself.

The ScanGauge II has a pretty hefty price tag, at $170 (including shipping) but you have to ask yourself how much money you could save on gas if you were using it. I don't have that answer, but I am of the opinion that this little device--unlike most auto accessories out there--is actually worth the money.

Scrap metal

For some reason it never occured to me before to recycle old scrap metal. Of course I've tried to recycle plastic bottles, cans, newspapers and other traditional items, but things like copper piping and chain-link never really crossed my mind. I feel kind of stupid, now, for not seeing that opportunity. For months the news has been reporting on the rash of copper theives all across the nation who steal the metal, even off people's graves, to sell it. And when we had a plumber out to fix some (apparently) faulty pipe under our house, he mentioned taking the old copper pipe to his sister who sells it to the scrap yard.

And here I am, looking for ways to supplement my income and work towards freedom from wage-slavery (see www.whywork.org for more on that topic), not to mention do something to help keep the planet clean, and I completely overlooked scrap metals time and time again. So now here's what I'm going to do: This weekend I'm going to clean out our garage, which is chock full of all kinds of metal scraps--from old lamps to brass coathangers to the kitchen sink (no joke!)--and call up a friendly neighborhood scrap yard to come take it away. Not only does the scrap get melted down and reused, thus keeping it from ending up in a landfill somewhere, but these companies will actually pay to haul the stuff off. Not sure how much scrap I have, or how much it will earn me, but I can honestly see a future version of me who spends his free time scouring neighborhoods for any bit of junk left on the curb, and whose eyes are constantly peeled on every road trip for miscellaneous metal bits lying by the roadside. A treasure hunter of sorts. Now the only question is, can a modern treasure hunter actually make any money?

We'll find out this weekend.

Why is there controversy?

When you become environmentally-aware, you start to also become aware of the inexplicable controversy surrounding global-warming, or "climate change" as skeptics call it. It's disheartening for me to read things like this, a post from a Weather Channel pundit calling for any television meteorologists who do not agree with the theory of global warming to be plutoed. (I've been waiting for a chance to use that!) Basically, she wants their "seal of approval" stripped. While I don't necessarily agree with any sort of censorship, and when it comes to so-called experts, on whom we rely for facts--not opinion, it can become kind of a grey area, what upsets me more is the vehement anger and outright hatred the post has raised from the masses of skeptics out there, who have nothing nice to say when it comes to denying that global warming exists. I'm not saying all skeptics are rude and immature, or that all proponents are altruistic and peaceful...but it seems like most of us who believe in what we see--the obvious change in weather patterns over the course of the last decade or so, the depleting rainforests and endangered wildlife--tend to be more open-minded and welcoming of change. In fact, by our very nature (no pun intended) it's what we are trying to enact. Skeptics, on the other hand, want to keep the status quo; their two houses; their his and her's SUV's; their little styrofoam conveniences.

I started out this post with the plan to pose the question in the title: "Why is there controversy?" When it comes to climate issues, and eco-friendly issues in general, I don't see why there is an "opposition." I don't really believe in "evil," per se, so it's not like I believe skeptics want the human race to suffer. If the question is between saving the planet and not, why don't we all choose to save it? Many uber-conservative Christians are defiantly opposed to the theory of global-warming, but it seems like something to me that they of all people would feel most compelled to help heal the Earth. God gave us dominion over all living things not with the expectation that we would destroy it, but so that we could protect it. No matter race, religion, or political affiliation, I would think everyone could share the common goal of a cleaner, more sustainable world. Sadly, this doesn't seem to be the case. Anyway, the point of this post was to ask this question and try to answer it, but I feel like I answered it in the first paragraph: Skeptics simply like the status quo too much. It's not that they want a dirty, unhealthy and arrid world, they just don't like the idea of having to give up personal luxuries or the lifestyle they have grown accustomed to.

This is where it's important that I make a clarification. I agree. With that part. Enacting social change should never mean stripping personal freedoms or forcing a lifestyle upon anyone. If we can't be free, then what's the point? What I would like to see happen is just a paradigm shift--a change in the global perspective on the planet. Instead of people using their freedom to buy bigger, noisier, less-efficient cars--just because they can--it would be great if they wanted to buy smaller, more environmentally-conscious cars. There was a time when the norm was to own slaves, or to use children in labor camps. Today, in most Western societies, even if such practices weren't prohibited, I seriously doubt that the average person would suddenly take them back up again. It's just not the social norm anymore; it's something we as a culture have moved away from. That's how I'd like to see us shift on the issue of being Earth-friendly. Even if global warming is not real, and the skeptics are right, what is wrong with doing things that keep the Earth clean? The facts on climate change may be disputable, but what about population increase? I don't hear a lot of arguments that say our population is shrinking, and that we're all going to end up with way more room than we have now. And no one is holding up protest signs that say "save our landfills" or "kill all the whales." Well, Fred Phelps might be, I don't know these days. Point is, there are certain issues like these that will inevitably have long-lasting consequences on future generations--on your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Do you want them to look back and say "Geez, Great Grandpa must've been an ignorant dick. Why would he condone this sort of world?"

Someday I'll try to organize all these thoughts into a coherent article or something. Right now they're pretty much just ramblings. But I hope they are provocative ramblings, and that it causes some discussion. My true hope is that it changes some minds, even just a little, but I can't be too optimistic.

(FOLLOW-UP - 2/20/07 - Since I wrote this post, the IPCC has released their findings on global warming. The question of whether or not this is really happening has since become moot amongst all but the most extreme hangers-on. Most of the points I made here are still valid, about doing things just because they're good things to do and not just because there's something in it for us; nevertheless, this report is sort of a "boo-yah" to all those aforementioned naysayers. But instead of gloating and dancing about, saying "nanner nanner" and thumbing my nose, I'll just say that I'm glad we have found a way to finally all be on the same page. Hopefully true progress will now begin.)

"Eco" things vs. just "things."

I wonder if what we call "eco-friendly" or "green" now will ever just be the norm. It'd be nice if someday things like "organic cotton" were just referred to as cotton, and maybe what we call cotton now would be called "dirty cotton" or something like that. The other day I was talking with my wife about the prospect of a green generation on the horizon; I said that if it's true that 2006 will go down in history as the year the world "woke up" to environmental issues, then there must be many more couples like us out there who have an Earth-friendly awareness, and who therefore will raise their children to live the same way. That means that somewhere in our future there could be a time when the burning of fossil fuels will no longer be normal, but "backwards." Our children, or our grandchildren, or even our great-grandchildren, might be living in a world much cleaner than the one we have today, and their global consciousness will be working to make it even better. Then phrases like "environmentalism" won't be quite so common, because everyone will be an environmentalist by default. I'd like to be around to see that world, but even if I'm not I would like to know it's on its way.