Media blinds politicians
If you really want to save the world, then its a little frustrating right now. If you really know your stuff, and it runs counter to the media’s interpretation of events, then its even more frustrating.
The market meltdown has been horrifying to watch – but the American government response has been even more horrifying. But even more fascinating, is the media interpretation of it all – and the wilingness of the politicians to listen to the media above all else. What happened to the days they listened to the people who voted them in? Their advisors who said, “If you do this, you are going to cause far far far more harm than good in the long run?” To date, this has culimnated in the highly unpopular ‘automakers’ bailout… Something the majority of electors were against – and lets face it, 2 things are very evident from this bailout: (1) To restructure, people are going to loose jobs (so objective one of the bailout is not achieved) and (2) the collapse of 3 car makers in the world is not going to cause a collapse of the entire financial system as the banks were threatening to do!
And depressingly, media misprepresentation is increasingly becoming the same way with the environment. Earlier this week, a member at The Dappled Planet read an article by an Associated Press journalist who preached the world was coming to an end thanks to anthropogenic man-made CO2 emissions. Many more scientists got upset at being misrepresented accussed the AP of being irrational. Associated Press refused because they believed anthropogenic global warming was occurring (in a nutshell).
However, the responses to that report still echo around on the web. Newsmax went off and found several equally eminant scientists to give their point of view which basically equates to there is a lot of unnecessaery hysteria about global warming. Another entry at at stinkyjournalism was also incensed and wondered if this was a result of Associated Press’ new ‘accountability journalism’ described at The Digital Journal where essentially the new Associated Press reporting guidelines involve basically an endorsement to journalists to “bias your writing any way you see fit to make it sellable…
And then a reporter for the Calgary Herald got upset at how the media was also mis-reporting a Climate Change conference in Poland this week. Facts followed in their article…
It would seem both the American media and the American politicians are getting God complexes here and truly feel that whatever their gut feeling is, that is the way to go and people who don’t feel the same way are just stupid. Maybe they’ve been to one to many ‘management’ courses which say all great leaders run on instinct and creative impulses and not by listening to people saying ‘you can’t do that!’ That maybe so, but even these ‘great leaders’ make mistakes and more importantly, they aren’t formulating their opinions bases on the ebb and flow of media commentary and polls! Politicians aren’t really listening to ‘their gut instinct’ is they go backwards and forwards on their principles based on media, small interest and polling rhetoric!
But why mention this?
Because its exhausting! Depending which way you lean, there is plenty of evidence to support your point of view! At the Dappled Planet, we would rather see a balanced approach to resolving our planet’s resource problems. Focusing exclusively on man-made CO2 emissions and how to moneytize them does not resolve the problem. Quite frankly, with the targets being bandied around, it is pretty clear that the only people who will benefit from carbon-taxes etc are the politicians and companies… because the reductions proposed do NOT drastically reduce 150 years of anthropogenic accumulation of CO2 by the end of this century – or even come close.
Sadly, the most drastic thing to do is start enforcing global popoulation control – imagine how wildly popular that would be?! And even that would not significantly impact upon the planet for this century – but we would defintely start to see a much healthier and sustainable environment going forward (Oh yes… Thats right, the economists of today believe the markets will grow for ever and for that to happen, the population has to keep growing…).
In the short to medum term, it would probably be far far more productive to focus on mankind adapting to the climate change than believing you can buy a house in the Florida Keys and not have to worry about the sea levels rising in your life time (or more likely, having the house wiped out by a hurricane…). Before today’s modern civilization, people migrated when climate extremes (which did happen and we have not experienced any of them in the last 100 years) forced them to leave their grounds. Today too many people are imprisoned in concrete towers in geographic locations currently not very well adapted to climate change.
And while the debate about man-made global warming rages on, raping and pillaging of the environment by corporations striving to cash in on the insatiable demands of humanity continues silently.
Its a viscious circle and a very tangled web of cause and consequence. Focusing on one issue – CO2 – does not resolve the appalling management of this planet by mankind. Nor do endless debates in the media. The world needs a holistic and global approach to managing environmental and climate change – and that is one debate that is not even being contemplated in they hysteria surrounding the management (or mismanagement) of a gas which makes up 0.04% of our atmosphere* and of which we only contribute about 5% annualy to and Mother Nature taking up the remaining 95% of CO2 production every year….
But at the end of the day, there is one thing we at The Dappled Planet are certain of: we will not be using fossil fuels to the same extent or manner in whch they are being used today simply because we are running out. Is anyone factoring that into their equations of every escalating man-made CO2 emissions? The oil spike (brought about by financial market speculation not supply shortages) in the middle of 2008 is but a sign of things to come. Efforts to find alternatives for transportation which do no rely on the current petroleum or the newer biological derivatives are essential – and we need to be finding them NOW! Taxing people is not necessarily the best way to promote that (unless those taxes go into funding alternatives which governments have been very shy of doing so far!)
*We at The Dappled Planet do acknowledge that despite the small concentrations of ALL greenhouse gases in our atmospehre, without these gases, the planet would be an estimated 20-30C cooler – or frozen.
