“Thirty percent of carbon released into the atmosphere is sucked up by the ocean, leading to acidification that’s killing coral and shell life. Coral protects young fish from predators, and tiny shellfish, at the bottom of the food chain, help feed entire ecosystems.”
This quote came from an AP story on the front page of the Post-Dispatch. As a journalism student learning the art of getting a point across via the written word it stuck out to me greatly. It is concise and informative and conveys a strong point of what is happening to our planet. Global warming is not a political issue. It is real.
The fact that there are factions within the government that are arguing over whether or not our planetary ecosystem is doomed should worry more people than it does. As I said, I am a student of journalism, which means that I am constantly trying to see as many sides to any story as possible. I’ll be honest here, it seems to me that humans are in the wrong on this one.
Various government studies are shown regularly to entice dissent among the public in favor of whichever party ordered the study. It’s despicable, but it happens all the time. I try to pay attention to these differing views when I consider a story. When I look at the issue of climate change it seems to me that one side stands to benefit monetarily much more than the other by keeping our energy supply as it currently stands than the other does by changing it.
Yes, if we were to totally change our way of energy consumption by switching to wind, solar, and electricity for cars (which has already proven effective) those in charge of said resources would stand to make a lot of money. But they KNOW that they will make a lot of money by keeping us dependent on fossil fuels. They know this because it is the way things have been done for years and it is lucrative. This allows them to pay lobbyists millions of dollars to do their utmost to keep things the way they are. Global warming reports by scientists from around the globe are considered to be “alarmist” in their eyes.
I’m to the point where I really don’t know what to say to those that think global warming is a myth.
“Marine scientists in the Pacific have traced the mass die-off of the sunflower star, a type of sea star, to warmer temperatures. In a laboratory, 10 sunflower stars were placed in water with normal temperature and another 10 in water only 1 degree warmer. Within two days, half the sunflower stars in the warmer water were dead.”
I don’t condone any study that takes a living creature’s life, but I digress. The sunflower stars are one of the organisms at the bottom of the food chain that “help feed entire ecosystems.”
Proponents of taking a different direction energy-wise do not stand to lose much if anything monetarily. They certainly do not stand to lose a fraction as much as those in the fossil fuel business should we explore new energy sources. This should be telling to us ordinary citizens that are abnormally addicted to money. We will often do whatever we can to gain $$$ no matter what damage may be done. At times, I myself have not been above this fact in my life.
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