Be American, stop ignoring climate change
By Oonagh McQuarrie July 4, 2011 at 8:00 pm 
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It is hot in Arizona.
It got much hotter for nearly 150,000 Salt River Project customers Thursday when a transformer fire took out power for much of the East Valley. The cause of the fire is still unknown, but Jeff Lane, a spokesman for SRP, told The Phoenix New Times that heat can cause the equipment to break down.
At the moment, there are record-breaking fires burning in the state, and on the east coast, there are record-breaking temperatures.
This year alone there have been tornadoes, floods, heat waves, cold snaps and all other kinds of weird weather.
Some of this can be attributed to standard aberrations in climate, but we must not write off this bizarre weather as normal.
Climate change is real, it is happening and we are doing nothing about it.
Our inaction is costing billions of dollars in repairs to people whose property has been damaged in huge natural disasters like the flooding in the Mississippi Valley earlier this year.
For some reason, it has become “un-American” to believe in climate change, to advocate for action against carbon emissions or to work toward alternative fuel sources. This attitude needs to change before anything can be done to stop climate change.
Which doesn’t make much sense. We are proud of this country, why is trying to save it un-American?
To change some minds, and maybe make saving the planet more patriotic, here are three reasons why reducing our impact on the planet is as American as apple pie.
No. 1: It’s easy
Fellow Americans, let’s be honest. We’re big fans of the easy way out. There are hours of infomercials out there designed to show us how hard our life is and how this product will make it easier. Protecting the environment is easy too. There are simple steps that anyone can take like buying products that go easy on the packaging or using a refillable water bottle.
No. 2: We love our country
America is very proud to be American. We have flag pins and bumper stickers and sweaters and songs about how awesome it is to be American and how awesome America is.
So instead of slowly killing the country we are so chest-thumpingly fond of, perhaps we could recycle some of our 243 million tons of trash.
No. 3: It could save us money
The implications of climate change are vast. The wildfires here in Arizona and the flooding in the southern parts of the U.S. are just two examples of what will happen if we do not change our outlook on climate change. And it is expensive to repair the damage these disasters cause. The Mississippi Valley flooding alone cost $5 billion. Think of the money saved if fewer of these catastrophes occurred.
Climate change is a real threat, and not just to the U.S. In fact, we are comparatively low-risk, unlike third world countries. Food shortages, drought and flooding could kill hundreds if we do not begin to change.
Fighting climate change successfully will take more than just America, and it will take more than one American. However, change starts with one person, and taking some simple, environmentally conscious steps could help preserve our country and our planet.
Reach the columnist at oonagh.mcquarrie@asu.edu
“Climate Change Is Real” – true. However, the catastrophic nature of climate change has very little to do with human presence and resource usage. Science Magazine, Northwestern University and Scientific American have all published studies/articles indicating that volcanic activity in the course of the history of the world have been the prime cause of climate change, and that the human contribution in the last two million years is negligible.
This isn’t to say that conserving resources, recycling products, and being aware of how our decisions impact our environment are bad things. They absolutely are not, but they are not enough of a contribution to climate change to justify the use of scare tactics to further the cause of conservation.
I would respect this article much more if it were to use facts, rather than make wild assumptions backed up by hearsay and public opinion. Conservation should be promoted as the ethical and responsible thing to do, which can be done without using the language of fear and blame.
While I appreciate your enthusiasm, unfortunately the “easy” things to do for climate change are nowhere near enough. It’s not about drinking tap water anymore, it’s about fundamentally changing the system that uses waste, consumerism, and unsustainably using our natural resources as the only means to economic growth. Yes, recycling is good, but even better is not buying something in the first place, or directly reusing the packaging. Better than recycling a milk jug is refillable milk glass bottles. And on top of that drinking less milk.
We need not only to recycle our trash, but to produce less of it in the first place.
Which is not to say that the consumer shouldn’t do anything — by taking our own actions (and dear goodness, most of us can do a lot more than drink tap water and recycle our trash, and we need to demand it of our fellow citizens) and making them more sustainable, we’re sending a message that there is a movement for better products and a more sustainable system. But the answer isn’t individuals. The answer is individuals who create incredibly large groups demanding a better system.
The way out isn’t going to be easy, but we’re either going to do it, or we’re going to lose the only habitat we can survive in.
To Page Gerrick: While Science Magazine may have shared articles that suggested the extent of climate change isn’t human influenced, they have also shared articles suggesting that it is (such as here: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686.full), as well as Scientific American (here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=special-report-climate-change) and Northwestern University has an entire website dedicated to climate change suggesting it is influenced by humans (here: http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/climatechange/about.aspx) — so if what you’re saying is true, is it fair to say you are correct based on articles that also have direct counter-articles? It doesn’t seem the magazine is proposing their stance on climate change agrees with yours, so why use them as evidence? Why would you take the opinion of those articles (which you have decidedly not shared) over these? Also, articles are not the same as studies.
Though I agree — regardless of whether we agree on Climate Change being directly related to human folly, we do need to conserve our resources and better sustain the planet. But not as an ethical or responsible thing to do, but as the only thing to do. We are using 1.5 earths worth of stuff right now, and we only have one (you can watch The Story of Stuff on Youtube, a documentary about consumerism and its effects, which is where I got that figure.) Climate change or not, we’re going to destroy the very thing that sustains us unless we quickly change our ways.