The Sky is Falling! Are You Tired of Gloom and Doom?
Just because you ignore something, doesn’t mean it’s not real
Climate Change
The Sky is Falling! Are You Tired of Gloom and Doom?
One of my favorite quotes I’ve ever heard was from Neil deGrasse Tyson. He said, “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.”
Science is the search for the truth. It’s the search for the true cause and effect and how we can respond to problems rationally and effectively.
So why do we ignore it? Why do we ridicule scientists, doctors, and engineers as “no common sense Poindexters?”
Simple. You never did the hard work to become one.
My father died at 78 from congestive heart failure. He could’ve avoided that fate altogether if he had just listened to his doctors in his mid-40s. He was pre-diabetic then but kept drinking and eating sweets. His diet was terrible and he never exercised. Doctors warned him to shape up or else he’d wreck his health.
He didn’t care.
The day before my wedding he had a mild heart attack. We didn’t know and neither did he that he had a heart attack, he just thought it was bad indigestion and danced at my wedding. My partner and I commented on how terrible he looked that night. There was no color in his face, he looked like a ghost.
The next day he passed out and was rushed to the hospital. That set in motion stent operations and a complete change in his life. He had just retired and was diagnosed with congestive heart failure.
Right before his death, he could barely walk from the bedroom to the kitchen without pausing. He died in his sleep on a weekday in November.
All this could’ve been avoided if he had listened to his medical doctor. He could still be alive today if he had only listened to what science told him about health, exercise, and food before it was too late.
My father is just like millions of Americans, they’re not listening.
I graduated with a degree in Civil Engineering. It took me 5 years of hard work to earn that degree. Then I passed the Engineer-in-Training exam and worked for four years under professional engineers. Then I studied and passed the Professional Engineering exam. I put in close to 10 years of hard work, of blood, sweat and tears to get to the starting line in my career.
Yet, some high-school dropout in the construction field lamented about how I had no common sense one day. I was inspecting his work, to make sure it met the design and specifications required by an Engineer. He installed it wrongly and I had to point it out to him, it wasn’t acceptable. He got mad because he got caught doing half-ass work.
I still hear what he said to this day complaining about having to do the work over again. He said, “You Poindexters have no fucking common sense.”
Amplify his sentiments across millions of Americans and it’s no wonder our planet will burn from the effects of Climate Change.
Scientists have been warning about its impending effect for decades! Yet, millions of Americans “question if Climate Change is real because it’s snowing outside right now.”
As a child, I remember hearing stories of a growing ozone hole. The ozone was being damaged by chlorine and bromine chemical compounds made by us. I remember how the world mobilized and changed the composition of chemical refrigerants to fight the thinning of the ozone.
After decades of doing this, NASA just reported that the ozone hole continues to shrink.
The science worked, the people and governments mobilized, and together as a world, we did it. We turned the tide of a growing environmental disaster.
So why are we NOT listening to scientists now? Why are we pretending Climate Change isn’t real? Why are we believing it’s a liberal commie plot from China?
I’m tired. People are tired. We just went through a global pandemic and we’re only coming to grips with how much of the world has changed. Ironically, scientists warned about global pandemics and a former President dismantled the warning infrastructure and ignored advice on how to handle the growing pandemic, but I digress.
I think people are overwhelmed by messages of gloom and doom. They’re tired of hearing how the sky is falling everywhere around them when they struggle just to make ends meet. The immediate here and now is more important to them than something that might happen in the future.
They worry about healthcare. They worry about having enough food to eat than what some “Poindexter with a slide rule” says about insects and birds dying off.
I get it and I understand. Our society has been manipulated to keep all of us distracted and consuming so the Elon Musks of the world can troll people.
We’re being kept in bread and circus so we don’t see the effects of our consumption. We’re shitting where we eat and then covering it with perfume to mask the smell, hoping it will decompose before it becomes an unmovable mountain.
Our environmental debt continues to accumulate until we default on it.
One day we’ll be like my father one day, barely able to move and realize we should’ve listened to the scientists and doctors all those years ago.
We’ll regret our decision and pray that we’ll die in our sleep as my father did.
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