Climate change: Finding the balance between fear and apathy

Family and friends often ask me about my thoughts on global warming. As a student in the environmental sciences, they usually assume that I am fairly knowledgeable on this rather popular and well-mentioned topic. To be honest, I only know the very basics behind the concept, and everything I learned was pretty much forced into my brain during my conservation biology class. I'm also not a huge proponent of global warming activism.

The primary reason I'm not on the campaign against global warming is that I get tired of hearing about it. There have been plenty of good scientific papers published on the topic and most scientists and researchers in the natural sciences believes it's happening, but the issue for me is how it seems to get blown out of proportion. The New York Times wrote up a pretty nice article about the topic last week (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/science/earth/25hype.html?_r=1&ref=science) which sort of spurred me to write about this.

There's a fine line between encouraging people to look at their environment with a new, more respectful perspective and instilling fear of the approaching weather apocalypse. When people like Al Gore tell the story of global warming in the latter way, there are usually two ways that people respond: they become so obsessed with the issue that they lose sleep over it and fore go all other issues, or they stop caring about the problem all together and deem it a lost cause.

And that's what's happening in our country today: companies are moving towards being "green" not because they've had a change of heart but because people are thinking and talking about global warming and want to feel like they are making a difference with the new choices they make. And now that the economy has become the new apocalyptic buzzword, people are forgetting about the environment. The idea to care about environmental health not for the sake of saving themselves from global warming never entered into our minds, and now that a more popular issue has arisen, environmental issues-not only global warming, but pollution, mass extinctions, and unsustainable population growth-lay at the wayside.

So here's my advise to other environmental scientists, activists, etc: find the healthy balance between fear and apathy. I like to consider it being "cautiously optimistic" about the future; cautious because there are a lot of problems that need solving, yet optimistic because of all of the great scientists and policy makers who are working hard to combat the hard issues.

On a more lighthearted and less intellectual note...if you ever watch 30 Rock, there was a fantastic episode done about "going green" during Season 2, guest starring than Al Gore (as himself) and David Schwimmer as Greenzo. One of my favorite quotes:

[Cerie is holding the refrigerator open]
Greenzo: You know, Cerie, you should really decide what you want before you open the fridge. You just released enough hydrofluorocarbons to kill a penguin. [pulls out a picture] This penguin!