Global warming is real, and we are smugly oblivious. I recall the USS Nautilus making a journey to the North Pole decades ago, poking its conning tower dramatically up through the ice right at the pole itself. An arrival theretofore possible only by dogsled and arduous effort.
Now, polar bears are apparently drowning in open North Pole seas for want of ice on which to rest and stalk seals at their breathing holes. Photographs from space, a decade ago and now, highlight the loss to Greenland glaciers, too.
It's an old story: seas over-fished, animals killed to the brink of extinction, forests destroyed, mountain streams buried under tons of mountain tops shoved aside to get coal; or arctic seas and wildlife endangered by risky oil drilling. We need to care more about the environment, and not just here, but worldwide.
For 30 years, until finally stopped by federal regulation, General Electric dumped more than a million pounds of toxic polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, into the Hudson River. GE is still lobbying to undermine the Superfund law in court and in the media while still falling short in remediation.
It got Gov. Hugh Carey to pose as if ready to drink a full glass of PCBs. GE still claims that the expensive cleanup would make the dangers of cancer and developmental disorders even worse.
"Da Nile" won't help the Hudson. And there are still loopholes in the Clean Water Act that allow mining companies to dump their waste into waterways.
But global warming is more amorphous, and perhaps therefore more ominous. Like other threats, it would be irreversible. Human beings are notoriously shortsighted. Without God's instruction, it is not at all clear that Noah would ever have been motivated to build and load the Ark. Who would have guessed?
But of course, we have science. Science, however, is not uniformly helpful. It can demonstrate the delicate interdependence between salmon swimming upstream to spawn and the forests that line Oregon rivers.
But negative consequences are not so immediate as to be obvious to those whose immediate profit is based on catching salmon. No one fissure alone can account for any devastation, so there is little sense of personal accountability.
It is deniable. It is also deniable that airliner contrails can have measurable impact on the amount of solar radiation that reaches the Earth. But they do.
So look at Easter Island. For over a thousand years, the Polynesian immigrants there flourished by fishing out in ocean-going canoes constructed from palm lumber. They also cut trees to make fields for agriculture. When the trees were all gone, they were trapped and perished. Haiti cut its trees down, too. We live greedily on Mother Earth as if she will always and automatically provide for our needs.
So science cannot save us from our own catastrophes, but foresight could if not overridden by selfishness. And the selfish, who manage to accumulate advantage, always seem to find rationalizations to pursue more. Science is then dismissed as flawed, or contested. Remember the defense of nicotine?
Moral objections by the religious are rules advanced to be imposed on everyone, not just within their own precinct, for themselves.
Such efforts are just as selfish as those to preserve special interests. Birth control, abortion and gay marriage are examples, as was the disastrous experiment with Prohibition.
Other rules, such as the notoriously ineffective War on Drugs or for the death penalty, are current examples of shortsightedness.
San Diego residents are due for a major earthquake this century, but no one there dwells on this eventual certainty, or even seems worried about it. We are good at tuning danger out of our minds when we have no choice.
But Americans are highly invested in the status quo, because we are well-supplied in comfort and security, and well-removed from the specter of plagues, starvation or deathly deprivation and oppression.
Our science cannot forever insulate us from the realities of other human beings in the world. Our huge dependence on coal, petroleum reserves and mobile military power is not enshrined as our eternal God-given right.
We have to be clear-minded about the long-term costs of sustaining a lavish lifestyle. And our selfish addiction to comfort and feeling superior should not blind us to the blindness of those who dismiss the risks of shortsightedness.
We need to attend to the big picture, the long-term picture, and the needs of humanity in general. Even those of the humanity across town are worthy of attention.
William Masters can be reached at wmasters@thedailystar.com. The views expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect those of The Daily Star and its editorial board.
Columns
Humans need to look at long-term impact on Earth
- Big Chuck D'Imperio
- Cary Brunswick
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What books would you recommend for a young reader?
What then, would be on that short list of books you might pass along to young people to help them prepare for life, and how do you decide which titles to include and which to omit?
Continued ... - Some wisdom is best passed down through books
- Let pragmatism, not politics, determine birth control debate
- As Center Street Elementary goes, so goes Center City
- U.S. intervention in Syria's uprising would be a gamble
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- Chuck Pinkey
- Guest Column
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If we don’t develop a sustainable system, who will?
In Otsego County’s local elections last fall, a number of candidates — most of them on the independent Sustainable Otsego line — ran on an anti-fracking, pro-sustainability platform. They recognized that our current way of life — dependent on increasingly scarce, costly and polluting fossil fuels — cannot continue.
Continued ... - Time to get off the bus and on the computer
- Cuomo's Machiavellian maneuvers are a danger
- Home rule laws aren't a radical idea
- Sustainable shouldn't be a dirty word
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If we don’t develop a sustainable system, who will?
- Lisa Miller
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Being a parent is a constant learning process
I am sitting cross-legged on the floor in the dressing room, waiting for Allie's dance number to be called. The cave girl costume has been donned, the jazz shoes double-tied, the hair pulled back, the requisite dab of lipstick applied.
Continued ... - Healthy doesn't have to mean expensive
- A family era ends with close of Potter series
- Independent stores make up for loss of Borders
- Untethered from the cable box
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Being a parent is a constant learning process
- Mark Simonson
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A Main Street facelift for Oneonta in the 1920s
It has been just a little over 30 years, 1980 in fact, that Main Street in Oneonta went through a major transformation in appearance. Even now I'll hear mixed comments about the changes, which included antique style lamps, trees, planters and brick trim. Some liked the changes while others liked the wider street with the even-sized sidewalks.
Continued ... - Perfect attendance by Saturday’s Bread for 20 years in Oneonta
- Recalling the Hindenburg, John D. Rockefeller in May 1937
- Oneonta residents had diversions aplenty in the spring of 1952
- Damaschke essential to ensuring Oneonta baseball in 1927
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A Main Street facelift for Oneonta in the 1920s
- Rick Brockway
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It’s easy to get hooked on Thirteenth Lake
OUTDOORS COLUMN BY RICK BROCKWAY ... With Memorial Day almost upon us, I was reminded of a great fishing adventure many years ago on this weekend.
- Climbing is one thing, but skydiving?
- Rattlesnakes may be closer than you think, so pay attention
- Spring is here, so fishing should pick up soon
- Sneaky fox may be the next animal looking to horse around
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It’s easy to get hooked on Thirteenth Lake
- Sam Pollak
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I'm happy with our kids to a certain degree
It was several years ago, and I was in the kitchen, telling my eldest daughter and my then-teenaged son about the person who was taking over as publisher at The Daily Star.
Continued ... - I get by with a little help from my 'friends'
- It’s not easy for a politics junkie to get off the stuff
- The Encyclopaedia Britannica in print, unmourned by me
- Angelo Dundee was always a good man to have in your corner
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- William Masters
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Time for lawmakers who put needs of society first
Richard Lugar, after six terms as a Republican senator -- known for his middle of the road rationality and his foreign policy finesse -- has been ousted by a Tea Party extremist backed by outside right-wing funding.
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War not worth gambling with lives of soldiers
Are you not tired of our war in Afghanistan? It had a point, once, after 9/11. Bush couldn't distinguish his myopic personal agendas from the nation's needs and let Osama escape, dropping the ball entirely, causing many deaths.
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Titanic was a microcosm of U.S. economic disparity
Haunting reminders of the Titanic tragedy have wafted over us with the centenary of its sinking. The maiden voyage of an impressive, state of the art vessel, was a little like that of the Challenger space shuttle, at the cutting edge of developing technology. But the shuttle carried our pride in science and space exploration, not hundreds and hundreds of people.
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William Masters: Nation stands divided between 'us' and 'them'
In February, Trayvon Martin was shot dead as "suspicious" by a volunteer neighborhood watch man. The case has aroused community reaction in Sanford, Fla., and is still echoing across the country.
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A quarterback can't win the game alone
What is the relationship between democracy and wealth? Democracy is a political system, while wealth relates to economics. We have equal political rights, but we don't all have money. Extreme differences destroy the continuity of community solidarity.
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Time for lawmakers who put needs of society first
