The Most Honest Blog You'll Ever Read

I know I don't usually post about things besides travel here, but I just received a link to the following video today and it fired me up.

The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See

You can watch it if you'd like, but really it boils down to this. He has a theory on how to make the right choice about whether or not to act on global warming. The theory is basically to make a pro/con chart and to decide what the smallest risk is. His chart looks like this:



His theory is that we cannot control whether global warming is true or false, so we need only worry about the columns of whether or not we take action instead of wasting time arguing over the truth of the rows. And of the worst-case scenarios in each column, economic recession is less of a tragedy than total chaos, hence, despite the potential of wasting money, taking action is the better choice.

Why it takes him like 9 minutes to say this, I don't know. But anyway.

Everyone already knows that taking action is the logical choice to make. But he's forgotten to factor in the biggest part of the equation: greed. Greed is the main reason that significant changes have not already been made. The personal greed of the small percentage of rich (and environmentally influential) individuals on the planet prevents them from taking action because, if it turns out to be true and catastrophe strikes, it won't affect those who are still rich. They don't care what happens to the rest of the planet and will do everything in their power to hoard money for themselves, including ignoring the millions of people who may spread this video around.

What needs to be pointed out- rather than action being a potential waste of money- is the fact that taking action could be a huge economic boon. The greedy who don't want to change because they're protecting their bank accounts need to realize that technological and lifestyle changes could be huge money makers. When computers were first invented, people worried that they would take away jobs that humans used to do; now working with computers is one of the biggest employment sectors of our nation. The same with global warming- after the initial investment, there is plenty of money to be made, whether it's selling $40 organic cotton t-shirts or formulating better environmentally friendly cleaning compounds or installing solar panel shingles or whatever.

People need to take a step beyond this "spread the word! just install an energy efficient lightbulb, man!" thinking, and take the truest step forward: that of convincing the people who make the biggest footprints that helping the environment does not mean going into poverty. It will make them just as much money as they're making now, all while slowing down starvation in Africa, the likelihood of another Katrina, etc. After all, remember who was most affected by Katrina? Not those with thick pocketbooks, that's for sure... so why should the rich thin out their pocketbooks to help the planet when they're not susceptible to the risks? The answer is, they don't have to- they only think they have to.

Human beings have been on this planet way too long to still be gullible enough to believe that the conscience or goodwill of the influential will somehow magically take over. After all, you don't get into a position of wealth and power by being a minimalistic pacifist who believes in helping others. (Okay, maybe a few have, but certainly not enough to reverse the direction this planet is heading in.) We are also gullbile if we forget that we are not living in a market economy. Some of us would like that to be different, but for now, it's not.

The goal here is to remove the fear of change- the idea that change=things being worse. Where does this fear come from? When has a new idea ever been embraced and then led to complete catastrophe? Take music, for example. When CDs starting changing to MP3s, everyone in the music industry freaked out. "We won't be able to make money anymore! Everything's just going to be spread around for free!" And what ended up happening? Not just that more musicians than ever before are able to share their work and people are listening to music in more ways and places than ever thought possible; but jobs were created too- designers for MP3 players, programmers who figure out how to stop music from being shared for free too much, scientists developing longer-lasting batteries, marketers pushing their product. Know all those iPod commercials on TV? When did you ever see TV commercials for CD players? Right there, that's jobs for thousands of people- creating commercials to promote a new technology- and while considered commonplace now, that technology scared the crap out of people 10 years ago and was expected to cause a recession in the music industry. Has any such thing happened?

There are thousands of other similar examples out there. Where does it come from? Why do industries believe that building something that doesn't need to be replaced all the time or serviced all the time mean that jobs will end? Like if roads started being built from recycled tires instead of asphalt. Recycled tire roads reduce pollution by reusing something that would otherwise be burned, not to mention providing a safer, better grip for cars, and they last longer because they expand with changes in temperature instead of cracking like asphalt roads. They'll last decades without a single patch. Which is exactly why asphalt companies don't want them to be built- because they think it means roads will never have to be built again. Maybe it means asphalt roads will never be built again, but why can't asphalt companies roll over into becoming recycled-tire companies? They could make millions replacing all the old worn-out roads across the country. It's not like that would be finished overnight and then they'd all be out of a job. And even if all those roads were finished and never needed to be replaced or repaired every again, does that mean there's not something else they could do next? Why do people no longer have ingenuity and imagination? Already the time we've saved through technological improvements (say, the dishwasher) is being filled with things we never could have imagined (such as virtual Wii tennis). What if we'd let ourselves be influenced by the sponge lobby? ("Building dishwashers will take jobs away from good men and women making sponges!") Sounds silly, but that's essentially what we're talking about. Yesterday sponges, today dishwashers and Wii- what could be next? Aren't you excited to find out? Or are you too busy servicing your Hummer because it hit a pothole?

This mindset that no money can be made in a world of advancing technologies and environmental consciousness is the number one thing holding us back from actually making it happen, and this video perpetuates that belief. From manufacturing low- or no-flow toilets to planting rooftop gardens to teaching home gardeners how to compost to driving a commuter train instead of just your car, there are endless ways that going green can better our economy- certainly more so than continuing stodgy old technologies. Really his chart needs to look like this:



Here the choice is obvious, just as it is in real life- and these real-life choices point out the benefits that exist even for those whose greed rules over their heart. When THIS message is spread, and only then, will TRUE environmental change begin to happen- not only for the rich or the poor, but for EVERYONE.