It’s all the same issue

I have beaten the climate change issue to death and I will say no more on the subject, except for this.

It was pointed out, in a comment to my recent blog, that I was confusing climate change with pollution. I would like to suggest that these issues are one and the same. As are the issues of immigration, war, economic viability, sustainability and everything else to boot. The real issue is how we as human beings relate to the world in which we live.

I am not a religious person but I do consider myself a spiritual person. I try, as we all do on some level or another, to understand this bizarre universe in which we live. And, as Paul Simon said, "the information is unavailable to the ordinary man." I do not claim to know "the will of God" or let myself believe that I am tapped into some special channel that gives me a deeper understanding than the next guy has.

When I look around, I am trying to understand things from a logical perspective. Obviously taking another's property is unacceptable. And yet, many people take from others all the time. Exhibiting a complete disregard for the condition in which we live is illogical, as we must continue to live in it regardless of its condition. And yet, so many of us demonstrate such a disregard.

The real issue here is that we have not yet evolved to the point where we understand that our desire for material gain cannot be allowed to outweigh logical thought. I remember an ad sponsored by the salmon industry in which Ben Stein excoriated the idea that we might want to be a bit conservative in our harvesting practices. "Take all you want" he stated, "There's plenty more." Now, just a few years later, salmon is close to being on the endangered spices list. This kind of thinking is getting us into big trouble and our denial is preventing us from getting out of it. It's not about being conservative or liberal. It's about being practical and logical, two things that we seem to have a serious aversion to.

D.D.