Climate change deniers had better be right about issue

ACHTUNG: This is not a “fair and balanced article. It is an editorial by the editor.

I once saw a religious bumper sticker that read: “If you don’t believe in God, you’d better be right.”

My corollary to that assertion is: “If you don’t believe in climate change, you’d better be right.”

Both assertions promise dire consequences for those who are wrong.

Too many in our modern society have spent decades denying warnings from a majority of scientists who insist that climate change is real, instead suggesting that strange weather is cyclical and even advancing the notion that the earth actually has been cooling.

Several decades ago we were warned about global warming, which was too easy for naysayers to counter with evidence of snow in Cairo and instances of frigid weather somewhere. Political cartoonists depicted a motorist not being able to attend a global warming seminar because he was stuck in a snowstorm.

So scientists and Chicken Littles were forced to come up with a different characterization about what will happen by calling it climate change instead.

Yet the public relations battles rage on, and politicians have refused to do anything meaningful about the problem, just like with the massive number of gun-related deaths, racism and wealth inequality, preferring to do battle over Aunt Jemima, drag queens, banning books and being woke.

U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow sent a recent electronic message pointing out, “Floods. Wildfires. Extreme heat. Did you know that earlier in July was the hottest day ever recorded on planet Earth? It’s an alarming milestone that scientific experts predict will happen over and over again as the climate crisis accelerates. 

“Like many parts of the country, in Michigan, we’re experiencing the effects of a warming planet directly as wildfires from Canada have filled our skies with smoke. The smoke was so toxic that Detroit’s air quality recently ranked among the world’s worst.”

So Debbie is “woke.”

I can’t help but notice every night when I take in broadcast news, I see and hear stories about awful heat waves in the Southwest and South, wildfires in the West, massive storms along the Northeast coast, and here in Michigan we went through a drought.

So what will it take before we really begin to recognize this crisis and do something about it?

Some of the folks who write in to this publication suggest this is a manufactured problem being used to pad the coffers of the environmental movement and progressives. I submit those who continue to benefit by staying the course, such as oil companies, are spending even more money on halting any progress that will cost them.

As long as we collectively continue to fight Culture Wars and ignore the real problems we should try to solve together, we will be spiraling downward toward doom, whether it’s 2030, 2050 or 2525. 

I won’t be around to witness this, but I really feel sorry for our grandchildren, who will be saddled with this mess.

“All of your children are poor, unfortunate victims of lies you believe. A plague upon your ignorance…” — Frank Zappa