Treasuring Our Home
There is a lot of controversy, passion, rhetoric, and prescription about what role humanity plays in the ongoing dynamic of our climate. Although it is common in casual discussion to merge the idea of climate with the phenomenon of weather, climate is “...the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years.” Precise, perhaps, but not very clear. These variables include “temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, and precipitation.”
By this definition, one extreme winter storm or one hot summer does not indicate that the climate is changing. Any single weather event is only one point along a continuously changing cycle. Our ability to observe and measure climate change has grown with the increase in the sophistication of our tools, and the lengthening of the timespan (many human lifetimes now) over which we have observed it. This long natural ebbing and flowing of weather conditions is not new, but as we have observed it recently, it appears to be changing at a rate faster than what our deductions of past weather have indicated.
I have never believed that hysteria and rush to alarm are the best course of action. However, this seems a good opportunity to contemplate how we steward our precious home and make sure that we are neither wantonly destroying it, nor are we sacrificing the welfare of people on the altar of panic. We can all celebrate our special home and take what steps we may to understand, treasure, and nurture it by being mindful about the waste we create, and the resources we exploit. But, I will never agree that humans are the problem. We are an integral part of this planet and misanthropy is not the remedy.