From my time spent at school, I’ve learned that inactivity and denial can lead to a student’s downfall. Delaying action and denying the need for action (“It’s not that important in the big picture… I’ll do my paper later when I have more energy”) would definitely lead to a student flunking out. So as a successful student, the key would be to learn the facts, know when you have to study hard, and work to improve your grades, right? Exactly!
What about as a country? What are we denying and pushing off? We’re denying climate change, that’s what — still. And it’s no wonder — the very people we trust to give us the truth through hard proven facts (scientists) are being undermined by big corporate polluters determined to put profit before environment. These polluters continue to deny scientific evidence that our climate is changing by human actions and that our ecosystems and natural resources are in danger, simply to protect their profits. Even politicians hop on the anti-science bandwagon to protect their political careers (often backed by their constituents, big-cheese polluting corporations — who knew?).
More than 160 Congress members deny climate change, even though climate change is staring us straight in the face through the eyes of Mother Nature. In the last three years there were 25 severe weather events including storms, such as Superstorm Sandy, floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires costing a total of $188 billion in economic damage and more than 1,100 human lives. Industrial carbon pollution is now measured as the highest level it has ever been in human history, and we cannot continue to deny that this is dangerous to human health as well as environmental health.
If we’re going to save our country’s environmental grade, we need to wake up and smell the coal. But not all of the United States is asleep. In fact, poll after poll shows that a majority of Americans want climate change action now. Millions of Americans support action to cut carbon pollution by power plants; the Environmental Protection Agency was swamped with more than 3.2 million comments favoring this. Actually, the EPA could cut carbon pollution by a whopping 26 percent by 2020 for less than $4 billion. It makes great sense economically, too — most of that $4 billion would be invested in new technologies and clean energy, creating more than 200,000 new jobs as well as a more resilient economy, and it could even save American families an average of $1 per month on electric bills, according to a recent analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Clearly, this is a much better path to take to avoid environmentally flunking than burying our heads in the sand and pretending that we can just take action later, or worse, not at all.
Source: NC Conservation Network
