Greenpeace Shoots Itself in Foot on Global Warming
Twitter is abuzz with this admission from Greenpeace that it was “emotionalizing” (i.e., exaggerating) the global warming issue:
The problem with this “emotionalizing” is that it discredits the environmental movement and gives power to people who say global warming is a hoax. I personally don’t find the global warming issue to be a compelling one. I have been around long enough to remember that environmental scares come in waves: for a while we were focused simply on “pollution.” Then “acid rain” came in vogue. The hole in the ozone layer was a focus for a while. Lately, it has been global warming.
There are so many other problems the environmental movement could focus on. For example, I would prefer to see more focus on overpopulation. Let’s face it: Our environmental problems are caused by too many people on a small planet. I would prefer to see the environmental movement support education and family planning in third world countries as a means of helping keep birth rates down. Global warming in and of itself is too open to debate and gets us off-track on more important issues, such as the toll our big cities are taking NOW on our watersheds.
Whether or not global warming is man-made, part of the cycles of the planet, or both, it doesn’t really matter to me. What matters to me is that we humans are burdening the planet in a manner that is not sustainable. Let’s focus on that and not so much on polar ice caps, which just ends up causing ridicule against environmentalists.
Tags: global warming, Greenpeace, overpopulation
You might have a look at the facts on this case. Greenpeace never actually made the claim they are accused of retracting. http://bit.ly/rW8jf
The Greenpeace guy in the video himself says they purposefully “emotionalized” the issue to get people to take action. The bottom line is, I still feel focusing on global warming is a go nowhere path for environmentalists. Find something that is less likely to be ridiculed or argued. There are plenty of environmental problems that are in less dispute.
Global warming is only being disputed in the political world. It is not being disputed among reputable scientists. Their only arguments are how quickly it will harm the planet and whether the harm is reversable. Unfortunately, the “worst case” predictions from many years ago turned out to be overly optimistic, i.e., it’s worse now than it was imagined it could be. A big problem is that melting polar ice releases a lot of greenhouse gases stored in the ice, which makes the problem get worse more quickly.
I agree totally that overpopulation is the root cause. My SWAG is that Earth can sustain 1 billion people, the approximate population in 1900. More than that, and we’re stealing resources from future generations. Now we’re at 6.5 billion and increasing rapidly, voraciously consuming Earth’s resources.
We have a choice now: we can either drastically limit greenhouse gases now to stave off devastation, while working towards reducing the population back to 1 billion over the next 100 years, or we can do nothing and let Earth do it for us by wiping out most of the warm-blooded animal and human life. The unknown is how long we can wait before making that choice.