Yesterday, October 15th, was Blog Action Day. This was a day for bloggers around the world to write about a particular topic of “global importance” to get people thinking and talking about it. If you visited a site that participated, you probably saw a badge like the one displayed to the right. The topic for this year’s Blog Action Day was climate change.
The choice of topic is not surprising, but it is disappointing. There have been people trying to tell us for years that humans, through our irresponsible actions, are driving climate change. They say something has to be done about it. This campaign was just another way to push people to action.
But what kind of action? What are mere humans to do to impact climate change on this planet? The call for us to do something to reverse climate change is based on the arrogant assumption that we are capable of changing the climate in the first place.
There is also the matter of the change that people say needs to be reversed. The ice caps are melting! The oceans are rising! Island populations will be swept away! Think of the polar bears! All of these dire assessments have to do with global warming. But is the planet warming? Actually, it isn’t. Global temperatures have not increased since 1998. What did we do to stop the warming? Nothing. What we’ve done was supposed to make it warmer, or so we’ve been led to believe. But it hasn’t happened. Perhaps it is better to conclude that the planet goes through natural cycles of warming and cooling, rather than conclude that mankind, through industry and innovation, has developed a god-like power over nature.
How are we supposedly harming the environment and causing global warming? Many will say it is by pumping so much CO2 into the atmosphere. But is carbon dioxide really a pollutant? A group of scientists met in Washington D.C. last week to rebut the claim that man causes climate change. Rather than being harmful to the planet, they affirmed that CO2 in the atmosphere actually “benefits people, plants and animals.” H. Leighton Steward noted that since the Industrial Revolution, there has been 12% more CO2 in the air. During that same time, average tree growth around the world has increased 18%. He called CO2 “earth’s greatest airborne fertilizer.”
When it comes to affecting global temperatures, evidence suggests that the sun has a much greater impact than CO2 in the atmosphere anyway. Sure, humans are producing more CO2. But what have we done to the sun?
Even with the planet’s cycle of warming over, the benefit of CO2 to the environment, and the fact that this world is just too great and wonderfully made for man to wreck the climate, that doesn’t mean that everything from global warming alarmists should be ignored. Conservation is a good thing – respecting the earth, using resources wisely, not being wasteful, etc. Why do these things? Not because we have the deluded notion that we can save the planet. But so we can make the most of the resources available to us in God’s creation.
The issue of climate change has become a political issue. But should the government really be involved in this? In this issue, as well as most others, the government in our country has taken a much greater role than they ought to have. One thing is certain – individual liberty and responsibility should trump the government’s misguided efforts to “save the planet” through regulation and restriction.
