Panic is a natural human reaction to danger, whether it is real, imagined, or imposed by the fears of others. Panic can cause foolish fast choices that are downright dangerous. Panic can also be useful to motivate observation, avert real dangers, and save lives. We've all experienced plenty of both types in our lives.
An example of useful panic happened to me during a recent hike with my grandkids. Even though it occurred quickly, the details are etched clearly in my mind. We could see the sun sinking into the distant Beartooth mountains as the five of us walked along a pine ridge near Hardin. We were soaking in those last warm rays of a beautiful summer afternoon as we walked along a high slippery cliff of sand rocks sloping toward the west. Unbeknownst to us, we weren't the only ones enjoying those warm rays. There was a young rattler on a flat expanse of rock tilted toward the setting sun directly in our path.
I was alerted to the "e-eek!" of my daughter mixed with the hiss of panic-activating rattles. It was time for us to respond to the panic with reason, not foolish jumping off the cliff. We retreated a few steps and adjusted to a safer route as the rattler slid off in the opposite direction (see greenwoodback40.blogspot.com). It was done. No one was hurt, and we continued immersed in the setting sunlight along that sand rock cliff east of Hardin.
Through this past election year our media has been pervaded with a different kind of panic—panic designed to cloud our reason and distract us from meaningful action. We watched our usually credible media flooded with wild charges of conspiracy theories and hoaxes, usually attributed to our president, Big Government, environmentalists, the CIA, etc. We are still hearing panic-peddlers proclaiming they're taking away guns, coal plants, jobs in Big Horn County, ranch land, freedoms, our minds via CIA-engineered controls, etc.
It's amazing that people are ready and willing to panic over these non-existent threats, while denying the reality of very real changes happening to our planet. Evidence of serious climate crises continues to mount, with faster than expected changes being reported every day. Arctic ice is melting at a higher rate than initial projections, while ocean levels continue to rise, and increasing numbers of destructive storms pummel our country's shores. In 2012, extreme weather and other climate-related events cost the U.S. a billion dollars. Our biggest insurance companies, our defense department, and even our major corporations are already retooling for lower fossil carbon consumption.
Climate change is not a hoax. It's as real as that rattler coiled ready on that rock beneath my granddaughter's footfall. The Bible also calls us to pay attention to our environment. We humans have been placed on this planet and empowered by our Creator to tend it.
Jesus commands us to pay attention to our surroundings in the latter days, and have a firm grip on reality as we trust in God and his way. Like false prophets then, today we let our media lull us away from responsible observation of our God-created planet. They give us blinders so we see only false assurances that every little thing is all right, and life will go on fine without changing our path.
It's past time for us to experience some useful panic over this issue, while we can still take some action to mitigate the consequences. There are certainly steps we can take short of leaping off the cliff or denying that change is occurring. Let's listen to the 97% of scientists who are saying that humans play a role in these observable changes. While it's hard to hear about the implications, maybe it's time to stop hoping the most devastating consequences will occur after our time on this earth is finished. Maybe folks of my generation have the luxury of retreating to fatalism, but this won't help my grandchildren or their children.
As the new year approaches, let's consider the long term future of our home and the role we should play in preserving it. For 2013, let's resolve to engage in some useful panic and let the other kind go.
A good place to start researching climate crisis is Kivalina, Alaska, a town about the size of Hardin on the NW coast along the Bering Sea:
These American citizens, in spite of struggling to keep their citizenship, are suing the biggest oil companies to force them to pay for their resettlement because their forced removal from their village is because their energy use industry caused the loss of protective sea ice and the rising of waters of the Arctic ocean. Also check out the book by Christine Shearer, Kivalina.
Here is the story of Richard Muller, a Koch-funded scientist who has recanted from the hoax of the climate crisis ignorers and now admits global warming is real and human-caused: http://www.democracynow.org/2012/8/2/climate_skeptic_koch_funded_scientist_richard
After years of denying global warming, physicist Richard Muller now says "global warming is real and humans are almost entirely the cause." The admission by Muller, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and founder of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, has gained additional attention because some of his research has been funded by Charles Koch of the Koch brothers, the right-wing billionaire known for funding climate skeptic groups like the Heartland Institute. "We could make the scientific case more solidly than had been made in the past," Muller claims. "I think this does say we do need to take action, we do need to do something about it."
Here are two more links:
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/chasing-ice-time-lapse-cameras-capture-rapidly-melting-17744758
http://guardianlv.com/2012/12/global-warming-10-myths-and-facts-everyone-should-know/
Here's some commentary on what we as citizens are up against to address the climate crisis, and what to do about it. http://sojo.net/magazine/2013/01/come-hell-and-high-water
It's the fossil fuel industry itself—not the members of Congress they buy in droves each election season, but the real powers that need to hear our cry of panic, even from Big Horn County, to change their course instead of focusing on the rosy sunset of fossil fuel profits. "Ignoring the damage they've already caused, these people spend hundreds of millions of dollars each day looking for new fossil fuels. And they spend hundreds of millions each year making sure no government stops them. They're like the tobacco industry at this point, except that instead of going after your lungs they're going after the lungs of the planet."
http://sojo.net/magazine/2012/11/divest-fossil-fuels-now
"…it's the underlying business model of the fossil-fuel industry that's the problem. They're making more money than any corporations in the planet's history, and they're doing it by altering the chemistry of the atmosphere. They're outlaws—not against the laws of the state (given their financial might they get to write those), but against the laws of physics. You can have a healthy fossil fuel industry or a healthy planet, but you can't have both."
And this from a conservative source only recently coming around to the reality of climate crisis: .
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-01/its-global-warming-stupid
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David Graber
Hardin, MT
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