A LIBERAL VIEW OF THINGS: The message is clear on global warming

Some who see themselves as self-ordained experts insist that climate change/global warming is alarmist rubbish coming from liberals and progressives and should be ignored. They might want to look at reality.

In a recent New York Times piece, Thomas Friedman discusses realities that are seen as facts in his column "The Earth is Full," because they’ve been observed and measured.

He asks a rhetorical question:  “You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?”

“The only answer can be denial,” argues Paul Gilding, the veteran Australian environmentalist-entrepreneur.   “When you are surrounded by something so big that requires you to change everything about the way you think and see the world, then denial is the natural response. But the longer we wait, the bigger the response required.”

Denial. This is a convenient behavior for easing pain, discomfort and realities we don’t want to face. We do this all the time. We deny the passing of a good friend or relative because it hurts so much.  We deny that our kids are continuing to not receive a world-class education because it means that we have abdicated our responsibility to control our government and have let it control us. That really hurts. It hurts both conservatives and progressives.

We hate to admit we’re wrong about anything. I know this firsthand. I become very upset when I’m proven wrong. First, I deny it, then I do my own research and when it verifies that I made a mistake, I humbly and grudgingly admit it.

My denial is just as wrong-headed as the original mistake.

Gilding cites work by the Global Footprint Network, an alliance of scientists who calculate how many “planet Earths” we need to sustain our current growth rates.  G.F.N. says we are currently growing at a rate that is using up the Earth’s resources far faster than they can be replenished, thus threatening our future. Right now, global growth is using about 1.5 Earths.

“Having only one planet makes this a rather significant problem,” says Gilding.

Specific examples of what the future holds can be seen in hard-pressed places such as Sana, Yemen.

Fresh water must be trucked in because the city is at 150 percent of the carrying capacity the Earth can provide. This is not science fiction. This is what happens when human growth and nature hit the wall at once.

Humans are a rapacious lot. We consume and waste like there’s no tomorrow. Well, someday, there will be no tomorrow. We’ll have reproduced and eaten ourselves right out of a perfectly good planet.

Americans, it seems, are the leaders in waste and consumption, but there are many other examples where the mad dash for financial gain (an abstraction) comes at the expense of the planet’s resources (reality).  Most of Europe is above 75 percent efficient in their use of energy, while the United States, no longer the most technically advanced country in the world, operates at about 25 percent efficiency.

Most of our wasted energy escapes as heat.

Europe traps the heat of combustion and uses it for a variety of things including generating more electricity.

From the early 1960s to about 2000, Japan led the world in importing plywood. They paid countries such as Indonesia, which has vast tracts of tropical forest, to cut their trees and make plywood.

Why? They used plywood to make forms for concrete while building their infrastructure after World War II. Today, China is doing the same thing with Indonesia, Africa and South America.

Thankfully, countries including Brazil saw that their most precious resource were those tropical forests that were being denuded to the tune of one Rhode Island per year.

Denying the inevitable exhaustion of resources as our human population rolls past 7 billion is not only foolhardy, but will inevitably cause our extinction.

Turner is a retired teacher and industrial engineer who lives near Marble Falls. He is an independent columnist, not a staff member, and his views do not necessarily reflect those of The Tribune or its parent company. "The Voter’s Guide to National Salvation" is a newly published e-book from Turner. You can find it at www.barnesandnoble.com/ebooks. He can be reached by email at vtgolf@zeecon.com.