Global Warming or Climate Change?

As president of Together Yes, I get asked that question often. It gives me an opportunity to encourage askers to go online or to the library and do a little research for themselves. They’ll learn a lot more that way than from my brief explanation. Here’s a good place to start: the Union of Concerned Scientists at http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming.

If you do an Internet search for global warming or climate change, you’ll find many sites, some designed for younger readers and some for adults. By the way, the answer to the above question is “both.”

Global warming, while a natural occurrence in periods of Earth’s history, has been accelerating at an alarming rate since the beginning of the Industrial Age. The reason for this speeding up, with its catastrophic results, is human activity. We pollute, we heat up the Earth, and we suffer. Okay, some of us suffer less than others. People less fortunate suffer far more from drought, heat, and extreme weather. It creates a sort of ethical disharmony that they have historically contributed less to the problem than we more privileged people.

Climate change is now resulting from global warming. At Together Yes, we often use the term “climate change” to refer to the problem. While global warming is a fact and can be researched, climate change can be experienced by anyone with his/her eyes and ears open. Hear the news about extreme weather events: droughts, flooding, cold snaps, heat waves, hurricanes and tornados. While these are happening with increasing intensity and frequency in the US, they are even more devastating in more vulnerable, less prosperous parts of the Earth.

If it’s difficult to wrap our minds around the damage to faraway people, we can look to issues in our own country, which will continue to increase in magnitude until we take steps to slow global warming. The impact on economy, our health, and food production will be with us for some time to come, even if we take action now. And if we don’t take action, they will be with us forever, forever being a possibly relative term for the duration of civilization on Earth.

It is frightening, and I intend to alarm. Unless we participate more in our government and make changes in our personal lives, things will get much worse for the majority of us. On our website, Together Yes does not entertain debate about whether global warming and resultant climate change are “real.” The evidence speaks for itself. We rather choose to address what we can do about it. It almost doesn’t matter anymore how we believe the problem began, as we are now faced with working what damage control we can, before it’s too late to do so.

All are invited to visit, and to participate in our website: www.tgryes.org.