Nathan Scandella (personal)

Environment Not on the Radar

As it gets closer and closer to the election, one thing is clear: the economy is the issue people are most concerned with. I suppose that's logical. The last 6 weeks have been an unprecedented economic period in most peoples' lives. But take a look at the other issues that people are concerned about.

Health Care, Terrorism, the Iraq War, and Illegal Immigration round out the top five. Where is The Environment? If all of the Other category were dedicated to the environment, it still wouldn't represent more than 2% of those polled. Are you kidding? Have people forgotten about the climate change crisis? They seemed at least interested a couple years ago. Are they under the impression that things have gotten better? Sadly, they haven't. Virtually every new study that comes out details changes that are occuring near, or above, worst-case prediction levels from just a couple years ago. We may see the end of summer sea ice in the Arctic within 5 years. That's amazing.

Are people just indifferent? Do most people not care because they think they'll die before the effects get really bad? Are they starting to believe the conservatives who keep saying that the scientific community still has mixed views about whether global warming is real or not (which is of course, patently false)?

Remember Al Gore's analogy about the frog? How you can put a frog in a pot of cold water, and start the water boiling. As opposed to a frog who's dumped into a pot of already hot water, this frog will choose not to leap out of the pot, as the temperature change is made gradually. Aren't we any smarter than frogs? Aren't we?

Posted at 04:28PM Oct 30, 2008 by Nathan in Environment  |  Comments[0]