FEELING THE HEAT

Depending on your age, I think you can expect Climate Change to have an impact on your life. Either from the thing itself (formerly called Global Warming), or from attempts to do something about it.

This impact may come in the form of actual weather: hotter summers, more violent storms, rising ocean levels, and so forth.

Or it may come in the form of job or life changes: getting fired off that polluting job, finding yourself with a new job with an improved carbon footprint.

And that goes whether or not you believe in the premise of Climate Change. (There's a lot of debate, though most of it takes place between civilians, not scientists.)

One of the big questions batted about: Are humans responsible for causing Global Warming?

That sounds like a fun question, but you can forget it. Doesn't matter (probably) whether we're responsible or not.

There are but four questions that count:

1. Is Climate Change really happening?

2. If it's happening, is it a bad thing?

3. If it's bad, is there anything we can do to change it?

4. Should we try to change it?

In answering question number three, we might touch on our responsibility for Climate Change. A new question: If we're doing something that's making it happen, can we reverse the process by simply not doing that thing anymore?

It may turn out we are responsible, but just stopping the bad thing we're doing won't have much impact on it. Or, reversing our bad ways will fix the problem, but not in the time frame necessary. (We took a long time to make things bad; it might take even longer to fix it.)

Ignoring the most controversial question ("Did we create the problem?") may have a good effect. It may turn out the solution lies in another direction, some brand-new technology that might get overlooked if we concentrate on merely revising our current habits.

Also, obsessing over our past technological mistakes (if we are to blame—and let's face it, we probably are) might make us shy away from any form of technology, even though it could actually fix the problem.

Folks thinking: It's demon-monster technology that got us into this mess, so let's move away from all that. We need to try something "spiritual" now. (Or some such crap.)

Could be fatal thinking.

For instance, if we had the technology to scrub carbon from our smoke stacks and tail pipes, it might work so well folks would be encouraged to gas-up and go! (Until we finally deplete petroleum resources.)

Or maybe some new kind of coal-fired machinery will do the trick. We'd never find out if the technology thought police prevented us from even looking into it.

It may turn out there is no solution to Climate Change, only ways of adapting to it. Canada will have a longer growing season, and that's good for them. Maybe those guys should be encouraged to come up with a coping mechanism the rest of us can endorse.

(Getting humans well away from an actively shrinking coastline might do wonders for the health of the oceans. We just need coral reefs that can handle the warmer water.)

Of course, all the debate over what exactly to do about Climate Change is lost on those folks who deny it's happening at all. Forget the question of man's involvement. Forget even the possibility this is a natural phenomenon we need to give in to and learn to enjoy.

These folks take the amazing position nothing at all is happening.

I could be wrong, but I get the feeling most of these head-in-the-sand guys are religious. And I get the feeling they deny Climate Change because it's not mentioned in the Bible—and therefore can't be real.

Which brings me to one of my favorite hypothetical questions for religious folks: If you had to choose, would you rather worship God or the Bible?

There could be a perfectly fine god presiding over a universe in which the Bible is just another book full of nonsense written by deluded human beings. In fact, I would argue one could end up with an even better god than the jerk described in the Old Testament, the sort of self-righteous a-hole you literally have to fear.

(But maybe religious folk think fearing god is a natural—and necessary—part of the package.)

Defending a belief in any god is very difficult. Defending a belief in a literal Bible has got to be virtually impossible.

Nevertheless, Global Warming offers a great opportunity to devout Christians. What an excellent Sign of the Coming Apocalypse! All of a sudden the whole damned (well, mostly damned) planet is going haywire!

Bible thumpers should be in the forefront, promoting Climate Change, stirring up hope for a fast-approaching End.

But maybe if they did that more people would take the problem seriously—and be scared enough to do something about it. That's the last thing Christians need, for their wonderful Sign of End-times to wink out under a barrage of unholy solutions.

Without a clear sign, Jesus might never come back.

Anyway, that's the way the human mind works. When the world presents you with evidence that contradicts what you "know" to be true, just ignore it.

And if you can't ignore it, deny this evidence has any impact on the contents of your perfect noggin.

And if that doesn't work, you can always lash out and punish the evildoers for waving the evidence in your face.

Or change the subject.

Forget Climate Change, guys! What about Iran getting the atom bomb? Why isn't anybody talking about that?

And so forth.

But don't worry. A proper human being is unlikely to notice any evidence that challenges the truth packed so haphazardly into his or her brain. Chances are it's going to be business as usual, all the time, right to the end.

We're just lucky that way.

[There's more about human thinking and the disaster of religion in the book What's Wrong With Us, available in Kindle ebook format. Double-click the cover image on the right to go to Amazon and download a free sample.]