Blog Entry #8: Climate Change

The earth goes through cyclical shifts of cooling and warming in different periods of time.  Various factors contribute to the climate changing during these shifts.  The speeding of technologies that allow the extraction of resources and burning of fossil fuels may one day become an apparent cause to climate change, but present day obviously are in debate if this is a man-made issue.  It could be possible that the usage of earth's resources are causing this warming of the stratosphere, and it is up to environmental specialists and scientists of all concentrations to acquire scientific facts and numbers on climate change.  A reputable source cannot be the main media outlets as there have been many biased opinions.  Climate change is just another fad that society will eat up that could boost ratings.  Al Gore is a perfect example of how the media and politics converge.  I have read Al Gore's "Our Choice" book, and the way it is written is very convincing.  The statistics and numbers seem accurate in that it is based off of scientific data (claims the book).  The problem is that I feel it has to be a total collective effort in the global participation in order to make a difference to what we may have done to the climate.  One person, city, or state can't make a huge difference in the global climate change, everyone in the world has to be aware of the ramifications our human footprint holds.  In my opinion, I feel that governments should create the polices that completely change society's views on how we use fossil fuels and natural resources instead of creating more waste.  Knowing that the media and the government both have hidden agendas would make someone less likely to alter their lifestyle for environmental sustainability, but self-education should be important in taking action and being pre-active.  Climate change has possible repercussions to generations to come if it is anthropogenic, and before we take action for future generations, I believe we have too many to deal with present day to fix before we focus tomorrow.