Are bad news good news?
Humans sure are interesting creatures. Perhaps we are the only species who can really use reason to try to prevent an undesirable outcome instead of simply learning from past mistakes.
There are a bunch of smart people out there, scientists they are called, who think that the human effect on nature and future weather is too strong to ignore. They don’t think that any of these big storms–the Katrinas, Ritas and Deans of the world,– are necessarily connected to this effect but in the future it is likely that we may see more of them. We have had this information since before the big storms happened with alarming frequency, meaning we were warned in much advance.
Did we do anything about it? Not really! It takes destruction and death for us to do anything about it. That’s OK, some people say because humans adapt! Sure we do but those that don’t die. That’s why we have epidemics where millions of people die in a short amount of time. Do these adaptation-promoting epidemics mean that we should stop doing research trying to find vaccines and cures for incurable ailments? No! Well, then why should we stop spending our resources trying to figure out global warming and other global externalities? Why does it take people dying to make us pay attention?
Leave a Reply