Political Dynamics of Climate Change

There has been a lot of talk about climate change recently—and rightly so. A young lady from Sweden by the name of Greta Thunberg, has brought the fight to the world leaders. She is quite right, that we need to be careful of what we do to the environment. I remember when I was a child, there were no hawks or eagles around my local area—because of the widespread use of DDT. Now after being banned in 1972, I see hawks daily and eagles weekly.

But there are still climate change doubters. Even if the science shows the impact, some will always deny it. Part of this is due to how the World Economy plays into the politics. This is often frustrating for the activists; who usually don't want to think about this part of the issue—because they believe their point-of-view is of a higher importance. Perhaps it is, but when I visited the the climate protest at the Minnesota State Capitol, the first few speakers were more focused on racial inequality than they were on climate change. I wasn't able to stay for the entire protest (only a small portion) since I had work to do on a Friday afternoon. But what I heard sounded a bit off the main topic. But since similar protests were going on globally, hopefully the message of stopping/reducing climate change was the main focus.

Finally, while we can be sure that we (humans) are causing changes on the Earth, if we look at the Earth's prehistoric climate change timeline, climate/weather changes and mass extinctions have and will likely continue with or without our help. Regardless, we, as citizens of this planet need to be responsible and try to give our children the best world we can.

—KJC