Thursday, April 3, 2008

My third child will not cause the world to boil over

I finally get chance to sit down here and admire my own blog, of which I've been ignoring of late due to my responsibilities that preclude blogging. You guys our there who have a job or children know exactly what I'm referring to.

Excuses aside, I didn't need to search long to find something to write about. Of course you guys know that I neither support nor am ardently against the theory of global warming. Yet I think there are some people out there who have fallen so far into idea that the world is going to be destroyed in 10 years that they really believe it's going to happen.

I feel sorry for these people. I would hate to spend the last five to ten years of my life being all stressed out about anything, let alone that the world was going to be destroyed. I'd hate to live in that doom and gloom world. I really would.

Ted Turner said in a recent interview that if we don't do something about global warming, "We'll be eight degrees hotter in 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow."

He said if steps are not taken to stop global warming, "most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals. Civilization will have broken down. The few people left will be living in a failed state — like Somalia or Sudan — and living conditions will be intolerable."

We, you and me, are the reason there is global warming. There is global warming because there are too many people. He said, "We're too many people; that's why we have global warming Too many people are using too much stuff."

He said that to solve global warming, we all need to chip in and, "on a voluntary basis, everybody in the world's got to pledge to themselves that one or two children is it."

My question for Mr. Turner is this: Where is your proof? Where is your proof that there are too many people? Don't you think that it is possible that the world is cleaner now than it was 200
years ago? How can you disprove what I just wrote in that last sentence? Not any more than you can prove what you said.

My wife and I have a third child on the way. The fact that he would be contributing to the overpopulation problem that will destroy the earth in ten years was the furthest thing from our minds. In fact, it never even entered mine. This statement is pure poppycock. It's pure ignorance.

You guys know from my previous posts on global warming (click link on top right of blog), and that I believe that we definitely should keep an open mind about global warming, and that we should be environmentally responsible, but to not have any more children based on this unproven theory is absolutely ridiculous.

I think if you want to have a child, you should do it. You should have five or even ten. Who knows, one of those kids might be the brainchild who finds a way to create a new technology that will work with American technology that we currently have that cleans the environment, cleans the lakes, sucks oil from the surfaces of oceans, lakes, rivers, streams.

Perhaps one of them will be the one who invents a new filter for water systems that is more energy efficient, or perhaps he's the one who will propose that we plant three trees for every tree we chop down. Oh, we already do all that. Who cares if your child doesn't invent anything, because he or she is a life who will be loved and will love. He will, in his own way, make the world a better place.

And, most importantly, where is your proof Mr. Turner that the world is going to be eight degrees warmer in 30 to 40 years? The temperature increased by one degree since the 1970s and, believe it or not, cooled at every location that global temperatures are measured this past January. In five years are you going to be running around telling us that we need to have more kids so we can warm the earth so we can melt the polar caps then?

If you want to believe in global warming, that's one thing. But to make statements like this does nothing more than remind us of how ignorant Mr. Turner is. I won't even touch the other things he said in this recent interview. Mr. Turner is a brilliant businessman. If I had half his brains my head would probably swell. However, he is not a scientist, and neither am I.

Besides, if the world is going to end in ten years, if I'm going to boil up when I take a shower one morning because I brought another CO2 maker into this world, then I will go out proud. And, on my child's tenth birthday, as I see that red cloud up overhead, I will give him a cigar and a drink so we can both go out happy.

I'm certainly not going to stop living, to stop making brilliant, wonderful and caring children, just because some media mogul says he thinks I should. This is simply another example of how some people become so partisan they fail to see the big picture, and that is what this blog is all about -- looking at the big picture.

Let's be responsible, let's recycle and educate our kids to take care of the earth, and encourage our industries to do the same. Other than that, let's smile and be happy and enjoy life.

1 comment:

Nikki said...

Well said Rick. I think what bothers me the most is the dismissal of God in all of this. He is overlooked and how arrogantly these men deem themselves more grand than he, being able to change the climate and all the power they think they have. It chaps my hyde!!! :)N