Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Just so you know...

I'm not a liberal party-liner on all issues. For example, although I understand that science has by now definitively established that our planet is growing warmer and (to a lesser degree of certainty) that an increase of "greenhouse gasses" contributes to the warming, I remain unconvinced that "human causes," such as emission of pollutants, destruction of forests, asphalting of cities, are significant factors in the process. A documentary that draws these distinctions may be found here. No slap at Al Gore intended: I'd like him to enter the presidential race at all events.

However, nothwithstanding my hesitancy to buy the entire "man-made warming" argument, I still believe we should stop ravaging the Amazon forest, stop driving fossil-fuel vehicles, stop many of the practices we've devoloped that render our planet less habitable and cause global conflict. I do so, however, not (yet, anyway) out of a founded fear of the effects of these actions on the temperature of Earth, but rather because I like the Earth the way it was, with abundant wildlife, clean water, clean air, open space--all that good stuff. Indeed, I believe a major contributor to the degradation of the planet is our exploding populations in the "third world"--which will be exacerbated by the imminent shift of many nations of that world from "third" to "second" or even "first," as countries become more industrialized.

So, I fret for our planet, just like a good liberal. But not for all the "right" (or is it "left"?) reasons.

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