www.womanthismonth.com 103 April 2014 A mounting number of folks are refuting discussions about carbon emissions, ozone depletion and green house gases. A growing trend is the disbelief of millions of people around the world that global warming is nothing but, well, hot air! What if all these years we have wasted countless column inches on a subject which is nothing but fiction? What if the trees are doing their job? What if all the money raised from carbon emission taxes was only a way in which the government found to tax us again? What if we simply have been lied to about the future of the planet? What if we are not in such imminent peril as scientists suggest? What if the planet is simply getting old and wearing out? Like a toy or a washing machine on the spin cycle, it all wears out eventually. We discuss dinosaurs and the Palaeolithic Age. We speak of millions of years of fossils and of mankind through the ages and his wayward actions. Perhaps it’s not global warming but global ‘wearing out’ that we should be concerned about. What if all the other planets were not born barren? What if we are alone because we are the last? What if we just have it all wrong? I occasionally go home and take strolls on the same beaches I enjoyed in my youth. I have known them for nearly 30 years; they remain the same. The water level has not risen and claimed acres of land. The high rises on the beachfront still sit where they did when I grew up; the water is no closer today than it was yesterday. So where is the truth of water levels rising on a global scale? I visited a tiny island resort during a recent vacation. The resort sits precariously along he says What If… by JAMES CLAIRE Floods in Britain got me thinking about the controversial topic of climate change. I heard of protests; only this time it was about planet Earth. the edge of the ocean; yet it has never been claimed back in the 10 years it has sat there. Scientists would have us believe that entire nations sit perilously close to being absorbed by the oceans. For my entire life I have heard the stories of Venice sinking, yet it has not in more than 40 years. We can agree that natural weather phenomena of recent years have claimed a lot of lives. Is it Mother Nature’s fault or is it our own doing? The ‘sea change’ has brought countless thousands of rich yuppies to the seaside. The closer, the better. Living on a private island, building beach houses and lake houses have become the rich way to live even in poorer countries. Rivers rise, oceans swell, mountains slide and bushlands naturally catch fire. We are more than seven billion people and yet our inhabitable land surface is not growing. It is we who are spreading. Perhaps we need to think a little before we build, procreate and play in the future, rather than blaming the environment and creating fictional realities. I’m not a conspiracy theorist and I’m no scientist. My own research begs the question, “What is the truth behind rising tides and global warming when the waters ebb no closer today than they have in over 30 years?” Too often we watch the news, but how often do we question it? Perhaps there is no great dilemma about the weather than the words of Kin Hubbard, “Don’t knock the weather. If it didn’t change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn’t start a conversation.”
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