Climate change is a complex issue that threatens our survival

I was horrified by Starts at 60’s recent blog ‘I’m suspicious of all this talk of global warming’. I feel publishing such uneducated tripe on an issue as important and universal as climate change simply feeds into the climate denier sphere, which is driven by the desire to continue a privileged lifestyle that pollutes the world as though there will be no consequences.

We should all be reminded that an opinion is not the same as fact. The world’s scientists reached consensus on climate a number of decades ago.

This is a complex issue that requires a genuine awareness of the threat that it poses to the survival of life on Earth. Yes, it is that serious.

Those of us who are over 60 have had a relatively privileged existence until now. Most of us, I feel, have worked hard and we are now enjoying the fruits of that labour. However, as we accumulated material gain, many of us were either unaware or chose to turn a blind eye to the destruction that our lifestyle has had on our planet, now and for future generations, if there will indeed be many of those.

Scientists have warned that if our planet continues to warm, we will indeed struggle to survive. There is no conspiracy on the side of those who wish to stop polluting the earth, but rather the conspiracy lies with those who have exploited Earth’s resources. Oil and coal companies have followed the same disastrous path, knowing exactly where that path would lead, purely for the sake of short-term monetary gain.

Coal is known to fill our atmosphere with unhealthy levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), but also a number of other polluting greenhouse gas emissions. Coal dust wreaks havoc on communities where it is mined and transported, creating life-threatening illnesses.

Oil, like coal and gas, is a fossil fuel. Coal, gas and oil have stored carbon beneath the earth for millions of years. Every time an organism died and decayed into the earth or a bog or the ocean it would be buried, taking its carbon with it.

Then we came along and mined coal, gas and oil. Within a few hundred years we managed to dig up millions of years of carbon and other elements, burning them into the atmosphere, while at the same time cutting down most of the world’s forests. Forest are our carbon collectors — or sinks — and the combination of deforestation while filling our atmosphere with greenhouse gases created the fastest and most extraordinary imbalances in our climate since the explosion that caused the demise of the dinosaurs.

If we don’t act now to remove fossil fuels as our source of power; if we don’t preserve and restore our forests, we are quite literally stuffed. If there is a ‘conspiracy’ on behalf of the renewable energy companies to make money and on behalf of environmentalists who want a cleaner, healthier and better world for everyone both now and into the future, then I say good bloody luck to them… For all our sakes.

The oil companies also produce the most polluting substance on the planet — plastic! Our oceans, waterways, land and even the air we breath are being filled with both large and microscopic plastic that we unknowingly ingest and breath as does every other creature on Earth! Bring on the environmentalist conspiracy I say, and please save us from annihilation!

Do you think there is a conspiracy when it comes to climate change and global warming? What are your thoughts on this issue?

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