Understanding the Opposition

As many of you may know, the realities of sustainability problems are hitting us quite hard. Gas prices are rising to $4/gallon with a projected $5/gallon for the upcoming summer of 2012. However, if you walk outside to the malls you may not believe that we are indeed in a recession and that the 2011 unemployment rate of Oregon according to Google public data is 9%. Furthermore, there are warmongering sophists who argue that none of the problems our planet is facing are real. They deny global warming and attribute it to the periodic climate change of the planet, citing the 100 thousand year cycles.

I am of the opinion that obvious things are obvious. Even if we had absolutely no data, it can be observed that the world is definitely in a sorry state. Smog clouds large cities like New York. In Asian countries like Vietnam and China people have to wear a mask to go outside. American automobile makers bankrupted because they made sorry excuses gas guzzlers for cars. The oil prices is obviously rising, and policy makers are doing nothing about it. How can these naysayers deny these problems happening around the world? Worse yet, their approach to solving problems is to do nothing.

Of course, give credit where it’s due and simply based on statistics at least one of these naysayers’ arguments must have merit. Albeit I’m not qualified to hold my own in an eco-political debate due to my relatively recent exposure to the topic, I find it interesting. Specifically I find the claims that we still have ample fuel in the form of trapped methane under the Arctic polarizing (pardon the pun). What are some thoughts on this issue? Realities of the environment aside, are there anyone in the middle of the road, that is, you would like to help the planet but are also considering the opposition’s theories and facts, or is everyone strictly in a separate boat?