A real crisis
 
 

A friend of mine from Holland mentioned in a recent email that folks up there have had some unusually warm weather the last several years.  So warm, in fact, that for the first time in recorded history, there has been no frost on the the ground in October and November.

I've read in the papers in this country that several of the warmest years on record occurred in the 1990's.  I've seen pictures of a bare beachhead in Greenland, which 40 years ago was buried beneath ice stretching more than 2 kilometers into the sea.  I've heard reports of glacial ice flows in the Southern ice cap reaching speeds of 4 or 5 times normal.  I've heard extremely alarming reports that the plantkton count in our oceans has dropped more than 60% in the last few decades, apparently inversely related to the rise in ocean temperatures.

And you know, I could swallow the argument that all these reports are left-wing, alarmist propaganda, if it weren't for the fact that the last time I heard, we had a huge hole in the ozone layer over the south pole, and a newly discovered hole in the ozone layer over the north pole, and nobody disputes that this is so.  I wonder if some strange group hypnosis is occurring here, because nobody seems terribly concerned about something that more than likely has never occurred before in the history of the planet.

Or are there arguments that the earth naturally loses its ozone layer on a cyclical basis, and everything is fine?  I've never heard one.  I heard an argument about a year ago which reassuringly suggested that the layer would 'grow back' once greenhouse gasses subside, but I wonder how anyone could know that, since this has never happened before.  And besides, I understand that greenhouse gas emissions are going up, not down.  And people are buying SUVs like they're going out of style.

The thing is, America is the leading producer of greenhouse gasses on the globe, along with China and half of Europe, so we won't admit to anything.  We are an instant away from electing to the presidency a guy who claims that it is disputable whether our gas emissions are having any effect on the environment at all.

Ok, then, so why don't we dispute it?  It seems like if it is even the least bit possible that our fossil fuel industry is contributing to the warming of the environment, or that our chemical waste had anything to do with those holes in the ozone layer, which weren't there when I was a child, that we should at least be arguing about it.  But I heard no great public cry when Bush proclaimed there to be doubt in the scientific community about these liberal ideas, and left his argument there.

And the big problem with this is that if we are in fact contributing to the decline of the ozone layer, or the ocean's plankton, we are not only, or even mainly, affecting ourselves, but other countries.  So do we go to these other countries and say, however ambiguously, that we are working on the problem, like we'd have a D.A. holding news conferences in the midst of a crime spree?  No, we send Jesse Helms, to lecture them on the sovereignty of the United States, and warn them not to mess with us.

I remember the reaction of Americans when we learned that the Russians had covered up a major radiation leak from a reactor explosion in Chernobyl, not warning their neighbors about what had happened or even asking for their help.  And when the Scandinavians discovered the disaster as it moved across their country, Russia tried to downplay and the effects of the problem, even though a large number of its own citizens and others were dying, and the streams running through Europe had become poisoned, and the rest.  It was all the more scandalous, in our view, because they let their neighbors fend for themselves.

Could the holes in the ozone layer negatively affect things on such a scale as Chernobyl?  Well, It sure seems possible, even likely, but we just don't know because this has never happened before.  Have I said that before?  People in Australia can't go in the sun anymore.  O.K.  Might that mean there may be global problems here?  Well, nobody knows, and nobody in our government wants to find out.  I find it unbelievable.  But you know what really scares me?

That I'll be around to find out.
 

December 4, 2000