On Earth Day, I couldn’t help thinking about two words that are the perfect answer to those few political ideologues who still dispute that human activity plays a role in global warming – Newt Gingrich!
Yep, Mr. Conservative has joined U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in TV ads that tell people that the climate is changing, and there’s undeniable evidence that human production of greenhouse gasses is a key factor.
George W. Bush, who will never make a Top-10 list of America’s most learned presidents, also is riding the global warming bandwagon and backing a plan to reduce our nation’s carbon footprint, although his plan would be too little, too late.
It’s getting so that it’s hard to find an environmental Neanderthal to twit about global warming. Even televangelist Pat Robertson, politically somewhere to the right of Louis XIV, is doing ads about the threat.
And yet as I listened to some gaga yuppie on National Public Radio tell how she was going to celebrate Earth Day by using a coffee cup made from recycled materials, I had to admit that I have little hope that America or the rest of the world will respond to this crisis in time to avert a real disaster.
While we have made some improvements in environmental problems, largely in air and water quality, mostly what we have done is simply slow the rate at which things are getting worse.
Atlanta and Las Vegas are among the most publicized American cities facing a looming water crisis. But have you heard one word from officials in those cities about how they simply cannot continue to grow as they have in the past?
Nope, all you hear about is plans to bring more water to those cities so they can keep developing, something that will only stave off disaster for a few more years and make the final debacle even worse.
Gas is approaching $4 a gallon, but American auto manufacturers are grumbling about having to meet by 2013 a fuel economy standard that’s nearly 20 percent below the average mileage that European drivers get today.
And if my e-mail is an example, for many people even Earth Day has become just an excuse to sell “green” mosquito repellants, shirts made from “renewable” or “recycled” fibers and a lot of other overpriced junk.
Fishing on the Detroit River this week, I mentioned to one of my fishing partners, John Balogh from Allen Park, that the walleye run was starting two weeks later than usual because the water was still so cold.
Balogh, 66, agreed, then thought for a moment and said, “You know, that’s only because it has been so much warmer the last few years than it used to be. When I was fishing for walleyes 40 years ago, we never even thought of starting until the end of April.”
He’s right. Spring now usually arrives a couple of weeks earlier than it did three or four decades ago, and the really crisp autumn weather starts a couple of weeks later.
The computer models show that if the trend continues, Michigan 40 or 50 years from now will have a winter much like the present winter in southern Kentucky or northern Tennessee. People will see a few weeks of high temperatures in the 30s and 40s, and zero-degree nights will be very rare.
If the models are right, what will that do to our fisheries in the Great Lakes? Big as they are, they won’t support the huge salmon, steelhead and lake trout fisheries we now enjoy if the average water temperature increases 10 degrees.
How about our trout streams and inland lakes and rivers that support populations of smallmouth bass and muskellunge?
What about the northern oaks and pines that make up our forests, or the bird life that can evolve and adapt to changes that take thousands of years but not those that occur in tens of years?
And what about agriculture? It has long amazed me that while farming is worth more than $4?billion a year to this state’s economy, if you went by the coverage it gets in major newspapers you’d never realize that we grew anything but garden plants. But how will our ability to grow the present crops be affected by warming weather?
Those are question that, at the age of nearly 65, I probably won’t have to worry about. But my grandchildren will learn the answers, and that’s what I really fear.
