The Answer to Global Warming

This one is so simple it slays me.

Instead of buying environmentally-sensitive, yet economically-insensitive cars with zero emissions, reducing your carbon footprint to near invisibility, and making yet more knee-jerk reactions to trumped-up crises, just go back to your elementary school science books for the answer.

For all you liberal environmentalists who seem to have forgotten (or never learned—science is evil, remember?) how carbon and oxygen relate to one another, and how both relate to life on earth, let me give you a primer: green plants respirate in a way that’s opposite of humans, in that they take IN carbon dioxide and breathe OUT oxygen. You cut down trees and plants, and you kill off valuable carbon-eating oxygen factories.

Taken to the PETA extreme, you could extrapolate that humans are bad for the earth, and all animals and plants should be free to live in (or to return to) the wild--of course, we all know there are major problems with that theory, starting with a little thing called “domestication.” Instinct can be bred out of something, and cannot be put back in overnight, or just by opening a gate—and let’s not even mention population control.

More rationally put, some development is essential for economic sustainability—otherwise we’d all be living back in the Neolithic era. Development in mind and body led to development of environment for ease of daily living. Without these processes, even PETA members would not be among us—they too drive cars, hold jobs, eat, go to the bathroom, and fornicate just like everyone else, despite protestations to the contrary and public demonstrations of superiority. Even they don’t live in caves, hunt and kill their own food, or do laundry on a river rock.

Another group of people who reside on the flip-side of this “return to the wild” coin are the locusts—the all-consuming Boomers who would drop (and have dropped) wads of money on short-term solutions to global problems without consideration of what it is they’re really doing (or in this case, NOT doing). The “feel-good” factor is just too much to ignore, and they have the money to throw away besides. “Be better than thou at any cost” is their mantra.

For the rest of us--who think before acting, and do some research—the solution to the one big overriding “crisis” of global warming, is to plant more trees and greenery. The Arbor Day Foundation, Euell Gibbons (I’m dating myself here), the Nature Conservancy, and others have been promoting greenery and it’s preservation for decades now, and all have pretty much faded into the background. The only active tree-planters I’m aware of are tree farmers, paper mills, lumber companies, forestry management staff, and landscapers—not nearly enough to make up for manufacturing and development here in America, let alone the loss in rainforest acreage worldwide.

Go to your local nursery and compare the price of a good locally-grown tree, then compare it to the price of a hybrid car, a hydrogen car, or even a solar panel array. You can buy a lot of green satisfaction for the price of one so-called “planet-saving” car.

The unfortunate truth behind this “problem” is that too many trees have been destroyed worldwide to make way for development, but this is a problem we can fix with minimal fuss, cost, and technology. All we need to do is figure out a way to make Boomers break out a shovel and sweat a little, instead of buying their way out of problems (in creature comfort with plenty of psychological praise, I might add). Alas, even Al Gore cannot be bothered to get his hands dirty beyond writing a book full of cherry-picked facts and half-truths—capitalizing on existing emotional blackmail and planetary plundering, instead of helping to fix the problem…and there’s the REAL hole in the ozone layer, ladies and gentlemen! The only planet he’s trying to save is Planet Al Gore, which suffers from a lack of stable income, world relevance, and media attention.

Hissssssssssssss…the sound of another hot-air-filled crisis balloon deflating.

Do you want to save the planet in a way that’ll get people to respect you in the morning? Go plant something—anything—that respirates the opposite of us humans. Trees, flowers, shrubs, even a small garden would help. Oh yeah—and start riding a bike, too. Nothing fancy—the ol’ generic yard-sale-bought Huffy or Schwinn will do—then put the rest into your retirement savings. While you’re at it, why not buy out a hybrid car dealership and turn it into a tree dealership—a nursery on the “auto mile” in your town? THAT would be making a sound statement while profiting from a so-called crisis!

Planting to offset your carbon emissions is known as “carbon neutrality.” This is what we had once upon a time, and should be aiming for now. Green should mean GREEN, not shiny metal, high technology, or ill-thought half-measure substitutes. Of course, in some minds, green will always have another connotation.