9/11 vs global warming
I’m wondering about why people seem to have a stronger response to the attack on the world trade center than the news that peoples carbon dioxide emissions have actually changed the planet’s climate, and worldwide changes are already occurring as a result. These changes include increasing global temperatures, vanishing glaciers and permafrost (which is expected to lead to rising ocean levels), and changes in the amount and pattern of precipitation.
An outbreak of malaria in southern Italy is a recent unpredicted effect, caused by the migration north of tropical mosquitos to places where they formerly could not thrive.
Obviously global climate change will have (and is having) a lot more impact on the lives and living conditions of people and other species all over the world; whereas the attack on the world trade center killed a few thousand people immediately, and indirectly led to the killing of a few thousand more (plus causing political changes such as repeal of the writ of habeus corpus, destabilization of Iraq, warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens and turning the U.S. budget surplus into the biggest deficit in history).
Obviously the twin towers going down in flames plays better on TV than a slow incremental temperature increase caused by invisible gases. And psychologically it’s more attractive to blame and attack enemy terrorists than to deal with our own culpability in the greenhouse effect.
But imagine if this country had spent the same amount of money spent on the Iraq war, on research and development of greenhouse gas reduction policies and technologies. It might still be too little, to late; but I can’t help think of the old proverb “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Known outside the U.S. as “a milligram of prevention is worth a kilogram of cure.”