A Country Stream Reminds of Conservatives’ Flame-Out on Global Warming
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The global warming debate would have been far better served not by denying the phenomenon but by presenting the unsavory choices to deal with it
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It’s a stream in the middle of the woods that could make a country boy in a Mark Twain novel envious. Ramanessin Brook in the hamlet of Holmdel, New Jersey, is a meandering, narrow (but not too narrow) creek with trees fallen over it every several dozen feet, un-fallen large trees standing sentinel over it, and a whispering if not timeless sound of water on a mission to flow somewhere….or perhaps nowhere. And most importantly, it is seemingly insulated from the outside world; it is a world of its own, disregarding any other.
Except that it is clearly tied to the rest of the world. Certainly the world we live in that is experiencing a drought.
My family and I started visiting it over the last several years at the prompting of my wife who made it her playground in her childhood.
Last year we went to the remnants of a mill which had become a waterfall. The water was high enough so that there was a rope from the cliff of one shore to swing on and jump into a deep pool. But this year, with the drought upon us, we found no waterfall and a virtual puddle where the deep area used to be. At that point, I suspected that Al Gore’s global warming might have hit given the drought that much of this country is currently gripped in.
Above: A country stream in central New Jersey that Mark Twain would take inspiration from shows effects from the drought; is there a viable alternative to this?
It is hard to disagree with the fact that we have been experiencing an increase in global temperatures over the last 2 decades if not more. And that led me to think about what the alternatives are.
I liked my country stream with its waterfall, to be sure. But I also like my car that burns fossil fuels as well as my house full of appliances that require energy, most of which fossil fuel. So even if we could definitively place global warming at the feet of human consumption, would we wish to sacrifice our standard of living? And this is where Conservatives erred in the global warming debate. I was with my Conservative brethren over a decade ago pooh-poohing Al Gore who was running around warning the world about global temperature increase. But several years ago I realized that even though millions of years ago the entire planet had a tropical atmosphere (something you can’t blame Union Carbide of any other human endeavor on), the earth was clearly in a warming period. To move the conversation along to the substance of the matter, Conservatives should have demurred on human causation and asked whether a change in our lifestyles, that Liberals ostensibly want but may not practice themselves, is what we would tolerate. The answer would likely be a resounding “NO!” After all, trading our cars in for bikes and going down to the stream to do our laundry would clearly constitute a life-style change for most of us.
Since Conservatives dug in and denied global warming early on, the momentum in the debate is now on the side of Liberals who would have us lower our standard of living and even increase global warming (see: ethanol) all in the name of their ostensible earth-friendly policies.
The time has long come to move the debate from the thermometer to what kind of lifestyle choices we wish to make. Anything else is just…well.. a lot of hot air.
-I.M. Windee
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