Even when it is explained to them, some selfish so-and-so will still insist on claiming that Global Warming is bunk science, or that it’ll cost too much to go Green.
How much is too much? Is $6 a gallon too much for the milk your child needs to survive? How about $10 a gallon? Is that too much… or is that simply what it costs, and we’ll just have to deal with that reality?
I want to go to the doctor but I don’t want to pay more than $30 to do so. Paying the $50 it actually costs him to be there cuts into my Hagen-Daz money. So I either find a cheaper doctor or give up the spendy ice-cream. Or maybe I really don’t want to see the doctor that badly.
The cost is irrelevant. Some dull tool said that every green job made will result in 2.1 jobs lost. THAT is bogus science. It’s impossible to predict. There is plenty of room for Green in our economy, and we can have it — as soon as the majority decide it’s worth having in the first place.
When people refuse to be bothered to recycle and don’t want to pay any more for greener goods than for things made the cheapest, filthiest way possible, what we’re really saying is that we don’t care, that we lack the imagination to realize what this planet will like in 20-some years, or that we don’t want to believe that it could change.
If you’re thinking “Awesome, Minnesota will be the new Hawaii!” you’re thinking wrong. Way wrong. The violent storms we’ve experienced this past year, the earthquakes, etc., they are just the beginning. The results are actually going to be far more cataclysmic… and our concepts of paradise will be hard to find anywhere, no matter what your concept of paradise may be.
Those of you who fall back on God, however you may conceive Him/Her/It, consider this: It is certain that we are to be responsible stewards of this planet, no matter what your religious beliefs. It is certain that we are responsible for not soiling our own beds, and for cleaning that bed up and making it, regardless of your religious beliefs. I know of no religion in which the Creator is your maid. It isn’t God’s job to clean up after us and leave a mint on the pillow. So stop waiting for that Paradise In The Sky. Even if you don’t care about it for yourselves, think about the generations yet to come. Imagine how uncomfortable you will be facing your Creator one day, trying to find excuses for why you were so irreverent to the Creation, why you soiled the beautiful bed God made for you. Even if you believe God has everything in His hand, you’ll still have a hard time explaining that away.
It’s time we grew up, started acting like responsible adults, or at least recognize that it’s our own bed we’re messing up, that we (and those yet to come) will have to sleep and eat and drink, swim and bathe in that mess. (And that doesn’t even begin to account for our responsibility to the other creatures on this planet whom we affect, kill, poison and destroy with wanton abandon.) The time is now, and there is no other time. Every day we ignore what we do and have done, we come closer to the point of no return. Some think we may already be there, to some extent. Why risk it? How selfish do you have to be to keep on fiddling while Rome burns?
We are not impotent pawns. We ALL decide, by what we do and buy, what happens to this planet. Green is still part of the economy, and that’s something we CAN affect and control. So stop fiddling around. Rome doesn’t have to burn. What’s more, the changes will make our greens greener, our blue skies clearer, the stars brighter and closer than ever before. If you can’t imagine how bad it might get, at least imagine how good things could become.
