I finished reading the cover story on global warming in the recent Time magazine, and I must say that their rather alarmist rhetoric was quite effective with me. Worded more strongly than usual even for Time, the article did a very good job of really worrying me and making me stop and think about the situation of the world, which is essentially sick with a rising fever, if Time is to be taken at its word.
I do believe in prophecies about the trials and tribulations of the last days, and after reading this article it's very easy to anticipate even more upheavals and disasters than have already started happening as a result of climate changes related to global warming. I'm pretty certain global warming is the direct result of increased homosexuality in our society. (I'M JUST KIDDING. Or wait, am I? Perhaps certain homosexual activities result in the release of more methane gas, which contributes to global warming... No, I AM just kidding. I kid because I love.)
I'm quite disappointed in my LDS Church for not taking more of a stand on the environment and global warming. We should have heard several messages during this past weekend's general conference about conserving energy, reducing our use of resources, downsizing our lifestyles, etc. The LDS Church builds lots of big, resource-consuming buildings and uses cars and other forms of transportation with abandon, and you really never hear anything about conservation or environmental concern. I think that's as pressing a concern or more so than all the rhetoric we hear about debt, for example.
I feel a little guilty because my wife and I live in a large five-bedroom house right across the street from my mother-in-law, who lives all by herself in an even larger five-bedroom house. We waste so many resources to heat, cool, and water the lawns of these houses. We lived in my in-laws' basement for a few weeks at one point, and I remember thinking it was a perfectly reasonable, comfortable living arrangement. I hate to think how much further ahead we'd be if we put the $1,500+ we spend each month on housing and utilities toward retirement or other uses...
Then again, if we lived in my in-laws' basement and I felt much less financial pressure, I'd probably quit my full-time job and do whatever I wanted, some combination of writing, teaching, editing, and eBaying that didn't bring in as much income or provide benefits.
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Global warming is bunk IMHO. Time used the same environmental rhetoric 30 years ago in a piece about The Population Bomb. Implementing extreme “solutions” because we’re scared is always a bad idea. Imagine what the world would be like if world-wide zero population controls had been implemented at the urge of environmentalists back in the 70s in response to the “overpopulation problem.”
So why don't you start by cutting down on your excessively long morning showers?
I compensate for that by recycling and by not flushing the toilet every time it's just yellow...
Our family of four (and two cats) lives in about 700 sq feet of apartment. It's cozy (to say the least). But I like that we're living small. It's less to clean, its intimate, and its sort of like one long family vacation. Our living room is also our dining room, our kitchen, our library, and the place where we entertain guests. Then we have three small (just big enough for a bed and a small desk) bedrooms and one bathroom. We could actually live somewhere bigger if we wanted to, but instead we're spending money on school tuition and travel and enjoying day-to-day life. It makes me happier than if we had a big house.
FWIW, whether or not global warming is really happening, we should all be wiser about our use of resources. I spend a lot of my 'free time' volunteering for freecycle.org and our family has a 'no food waste' policy (meaning, that if we can't eat the food, we compost it in some vericulture bins on our back porch and then use that for garden fertilizer). Waste not, want not :)
I'm speechless at some of the responses you've gotten.
Much better than the Time story, and far scarier, was the three-part series Elizabeth Kolbert did for The New Yorker about a year ago. A recent "Talk of the Town" column she did on the subject is here and says, in part:
In the face of such news, how does a country, i.e. the United States, justify further inaction? Certainly, there isn't much tread left in the argument that global warming is, to use Senator James Inhofe's famous formulation, a "hoax." In January, six former heads of the Environmental Protection Agency, five of whom had served under Republican Administrations, met with the current administrator, Stephen Johnson, for a panel discussion in Washington. Panelists were asked to hold up their hands if they believed global warming to be a real problem, for which human activity was responsible. Every one of them, Johnson included, raised a hand.
Managed to find links to those New Yorker stories, in convenient printable form:
"The Climate of Man—I"
"The Climate of Man—II"
"The Climate of Man—III"
If enough people followed the commands of the prophet and kept a year's supply of food and grew their own in a garden, it would significantly help the environment, if only by reducing transportation costs.
Just because someone doesn't say "Do it for the environment" doesn't mean it's not helpful.
And people who think global warming is a hoax are deliberately ignorant people who wouldn't know the truth if it bit them on the nose, 'cause they wouldn't bother to find out for themselves.
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