Hate to Say I Told You So..

I wrote a lot in past months about how the reality or accuracy of human-caused climate change is irrelevant.  Many in the environmental community and otherwise hopped on the global warming bandwagon, hoping that it would be the spark that finally ignited an environmental movement in the mainstream.  Unfortunately, in doing so they placed all their eggs in one basket, and not even one that was worth betting on.  Worse, by pushing for change on only one front, skeptics needed to merely dismantle a single piece of the science to discredit the entire movement and the people involved in it.  In the end, it all came down to a few emails between colleagues.

As far as building a movement is concerned, climate change was always going to be plagued by the reality that the science was not 100%.  As close to a consensus as it was, it was still disputable, and difficult to use as a platform for overhauling our entire way of living.  This is in contrast to related issues like species extinction and resource depletion, which I laid out in July.  These are issues which are well documented, indisputable, and are are more threatening than climate change (if anything), and yet they are generally ignored by the public and media.  Had Al Gore given a slideshow on peak oil, perhaps we would be in a different position today.

Amazingly, amidst the leaked emails, almost nothing has changed, and yet everything has.  The science behind climate change itself is still very much intact, but this will certainly mark a shift in public perception and support.  So what do we do now?  We can decide that climate change is the hill we are willing to die on, or switch gears and try to deal with one of the real problems (as opposed to the symptom).  Unfortunately, in either scenario, the green movement has taken a huge blow to its credibility, so any route will now be an uphill climb.

Waiting to see how it all plays out...