But I don't. I actually really like it. Being a native of planet Earth and all. I like animals, especially some big endangered ones. I really like whales, for example.
I'd like to save the whales, that would be cool. I'm down with that. But I would hate for people to get the wrong impression and think that I agree with most global warming policy. Or any of it.
The truth is, I just think most environmentalists are either completely stupid or completely misguided. There are a number of reasons for this, some of which I'm sure will appear on this blog at a later date, but here are a couple big ones.
My carbon emissions are not going to kill Galapagos penguins. Cats are. That's right, house cats. The single greatest cause of land-animal extinction is species migration caused by humans. We like to travel, but we also like to bring our bugs and mammals with us. 30 new species are introduced to the Hawaiian Islands every year, and they are decimating native populations which have no evolutionary defense against them. I mean really, how the hell is a flightless baby bird going to defend itself against a hungry house cat?
(Om nom nom.)I don't have any numbers here other than for Hawaii, but I have read time and time again that this unnatural migration is killing hundreds of species all over the world every year, moreso than destruction of habitat or a slight increase in temperature. Teeth, claws, and bug infestations win over weather.
Here in Minnesota the most obvious example is the Zebra mussel. Apart from being a damned nuisance to everyone with an outboard motor, they are completely changing the nature of our 10,000+ lakes. They latch onto and kill native mussels, and filter plankton, increasing water clarity and therefore the depth at which vegetation can grow, and therefore the kind of vegetation we have in our lakes. Which changes everything. And we all know how they got here.
As for the ocean, we all know that the large fishing operations are ridiculous. They decimate miles and miles of healthy fish populations to feed hungry mouths that live thousands of miles from those fish. (Mostly in Asia, but I don't like to point fingers. Unless it helps my point or makes me feel better. Here it does neither, so I can pretend to be lofty.) It's gotten to the point where indigenous populations of Humans in the South Pacific, who exist there only because of subsistence fishing, can barely scrape by. Many nearly starve after the Asian fishing vessels clean out the fish around their islands, and it takes months to return to normal. Despite international law, the crazies at Greenpeace and Peta, and various UN Resolutions, the Pacific is too grand a wilderness to monitor everything. International eyes are elsewhere, and more importantly, there is money to be made.
There are enough people writing about this that I don't feel the need to elaborate further. Robert Gillett has an excellent and concise text on the matter available online, A Short History of Industrial Fishing in the Pacific Islands. For more information on attempts to re-stock fish in many oceans and seas, I recommend this article, with an easy-to-read and very prettily illustrated abstract here.
And what is the point of all of this information, you ask?
We're not doing anything about it.
We're supposed to turn down our heat, I'm supposed to get a Prius and get rid of my truck. We need Wind Turbines (even though nobody realizes they ONLY WORK WHEN THE WIND IS BLOWING), and solar panels (which ONLY WORK WHEN THE SUN IS SHINING). We're supposed to feel bad about every ounce of fossil fuel we use.
But Al Gore hasn't said a damn word about house cats eating penguin babies. Or giant Japanese fishing vessels catching sharks for shark-fin soup, cutting their fins off, and throwing them back into the water, still alive but unable to swim, so that they can die on their way to the abyssal plain. Tens of thousands of sharks each year. He doesn't care, he's just a guy on a power trip (and possibly acid) who wants to tell you how much electricity you can use.
In reality, while carbon emissions are a problem that we have to face, our priorties are mixed up, and our ideal solutions are misplaced. Al Gore's most recent speech about Cap and Trade and the first steps toward World Government strikes me as completely ridiculous. It's a power grab with too many obvious omissions, even more hidden inclusions, and the speech has all the earmarks of fanaticism. I have a separate beef with Al Gore, possibly because I enjoy non-organic beef, but that's a rant for another day.
This is, as so many of my rants are, really about people who just aren't thinking things through. They are not sitting down with a whiteboard and saying, "okay, what is our biggest problem right now, and how do we fix it for the future?" They are rushing headfirst, like our President, our Congress, and the United Nations, into things that no one fully understands, and no one is willing to think through. All that matters is that legislation is passed and people get re-elected. It offends me deeply.
All we need, for anything in life, is a little common sense. It's been a long time since I've seen any of that. Thomas Paine, where are you?
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