True Progress...

I read the other day that one of the most significant (relatively) recent

natural climate change events occurred over something like 10,000 years

and experienced a drop of 9° in mean global temperature. Some of the more

average scientific models of the next 100 years place the temperature

change at about 5°. Think about that, without even doing the math that

change is way, way, way faster than any natural process, with the

exception of maybe a meteor or some sort of alien invasion.

I’ve always been a little more climate-conscious, environmentally

conscious I should say, than most people that I know. My family spends a

large amount of time working and playing at a local organic farm set up by

the Rockefeller family, so “organic” has been in our vocabulary since the

beginning. Currently, as I am very much a college student and very much

not a farmer, my exposure to the natural world is largely second-hand.

This is not to say that I no longer care about the issues facing the

future, I probably wouldn’t be taking Earth Science if I didn’t. In fact

I’m considering an Earth Science major specifically because I think that I

have a role to play in this planet’s future.

I have a lot of trouble with the fact that people tend to discount climate

change as some crazy liberal scare tactic designed to kill the economy and

hurt George Bush. This issue is so much more important than politicians

that the two should not even be used in the same sentence, much less

directly tied to each other. The fact that a correlation exists between a

life-altering global issue and the personal agenda of some individual is

ridiculous.

While working with PRI on this project I would really like to convey a few

of these views (maybe some of the less radical ones) to the people who

actually make a difference. A team of scientists or university students

can change a little in the world, but it takes the entire world to make

true progress, especially on an issue so decidedly global in nature.

-Lloyd Ellman, Cornell University Student