Do you believe in Global Climate Change?
The threat of Global Climate Change is not that things will heat up and turn us all to toast by next summer, nor is it that things will cool off this winter such that the snow we get will start the base of a glacier which will not melt for 10,000 years.
No, the threat of Global Climate Change is that it will raise 0.025 degrees this summer, and another 0.025 degrees next summer. This will keep going so that in a decade the temperature will have risen 0.25 degrees. Hardly something that anyone would notice. The oceans will get just a tiny bit warmer and the polar ice caps will melt just a little more than they freeze next winter. In 10 or 15 years, if the water is a bit warmer, we would probably enjoy swimming in it all the more.
In 50 or 100 years, we will just begin to see the difference, when the temperature is 2.5 degrees higer than it is today and sea level has risen by a foot. By that time, it may be too late to reverse the process. Some of the most fertile areas of the world may no longer support agriculture and starvation may be imminent.
We're funny, in a way. If someone told us that they were going to take a hammer and smash our thumb, it would anger or frighten us. But if someone told us that they were going to take a million cars an make our environment unlivable in 500 years, we would probably shrug and ignore them. We are more concerned about the small inconveniences which are happening now than the enormous tragedies which are some unspecified time in the future.
Something far more serious than the threat of Global Climate Change has already struck our society. We observe two different things and we don't tie them together. We are outraged at one and tittilated by the other. For the past 60 years we have undergone a Societal Morality Change.
Let me begin this discussion by saying that "YES, there have always been corrupt people in government, there have always been people cheating on their spouses, and there have always been murders". Just as even in the height of the "little ice age" which hit northern Europe in the 1700s, there were warm days.
However, we have come to a point in our society where we don't see the wrong in some immorality, nor do we see the connection between one form of immorality and another.
I will grant you that I am an old codger, so I learned the basics of morality in a different era than is prevalent today. However, I am disappointed by the ignorance which thinks that just because our level of technology has changed, the human psyche has changed. For 3000 to 4000 years, it has been considered imoral for one person to attempt to seduce another without the intent of marriage; today, we not only have a divorce rate of over 50%, we have people living together and having children without being married at all.
I can hear your comments now ... "don't be such a prude", "don't be so naive".
How about we apply those same comments to the doomsayers who tell us that Global Climate Change will destroy the earth. "Don't be so naive!"
"Ah, but they have proof. The water is warmer in certain parts of the world and undersea life is being affected."
I have proof. A lot of kids are being raised at the poverty level, dropping out of school and dropping out of life because of the broken homes.
"Ah, but the kids aren't saying that their problems are due to the broken homes ... it's stuff like peer pressure at school ... life is harder for kids than when you were a kid."
The fish aren't complaining about the temperature, either ... but it is harder to find food at time, and sometimes it is harder to breathe. Life is harder for fish than when I was a kid.
"But I want to do what I want to do with out somebody judging me and telling me I'm being immoral!"
Hey, I want to dump the oil I drained out of my car in my back yard with out someone telling me I'm polluting!
"But you ARE polluting!"
Just by your standards ... but you ARE being immoral.
"Just by your standards. And besides, lots of people, like the EPA, say that it is polluting to dump oil in your back yard."
Just as the standards of most civilizations going back nearly 4000 years tie marriage and sex and family together.
"Yeah, but what do they know ... that was a long time ago and things are different now."
Oh, you mean that having casual sex and using another human being simply to satisfy your own desires isn't the same disregard for another's humanity as it was 3500 years ago.
"Naw, it's not like that 'cause like they want it, too."
So, mutually using each other while denying the ultimate humanity of the other person is OK so long as you both do it?
"Well, something like that, I guess."
I rest my case. We have gone beyond immorality to the point where we don't even know what morality is.
Buz
