On Climate Inaction

I have a question to put forth.

The anti-climate change/anti-Kyoto folks' argument always centres around their skepticism that humans are responsible for the environmental issues that are coming to a head. eg. "The lobby group was formed several years ago to protest Canada's legally binding commitments in the international Kyoto agreement on climate change and cast doubt about research linking human activity to global warming."

These arguments persist and are eaten up by the tragically uniformed despite the following:

"The overwhelming majority of scientists that study climate change agree that human activity is responsible for changing the climate. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is one of the largest bodies of international scientists ever assembled to study a scientific issue, comprised of more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries. The IPCC has concluded that most of the warming observed during the past 50 years is attributable to human activities. Its findings have been publicly endorsed by the national academies of science of all G-8 countries, as well as those of China, India and Brazil. The Royal Society of Canada – together with the national academies of fifteen other nations – also issued a joint statement on climate change that stated, in part: "The work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) represents the consensus of the international scientific community on climate change science. We recognize IPCC as the world's most reliable source of information on climate change."

I think we can agree that humans have contributed something to the issue (think Greenhouse Effect) even if we can't all agree that we are primarily responsible (think Earth's natural cycles of hot & cold).

BUT,

I posit,

Does it matter who or what caused/is causing the problem?

AND, even if there was no evidence of climate change, would we not still want to commit to reducing our pollution output levels? Does it matter if every single country in the world is committing to action?

The range of historical tragedies, from genocide to colonialism to the restriction of human rights, were/are supposed to teach us to think as a global unified species and that positive action, no matter how small, makes a difference and starts to avalanche into more and better action. It is also a tenet we attempt to teach the young though we refuse to model the behaviour.

It seems to me that all the bickering going on about who is at fault for melting ice caps or the childish attitude of we-won't-do-anything-unless-China etc.-does-too is completely irrelevant to just doing something about the wellness of Earth and its inhabitants.

Spending so much time and energy closely examining the relationship between Industry and Climate restricts our view of the Big Picture: the planet is under siege, species are rapidly becoming extinct, air/water/land pollution is out of control, and the health of living things is under attack.

I decided to take a quick search about and found a video that takes a similar but radically different approach to the argument. In his awesome video How It All Ends, science dude Greg Craven demonstrates that deciding to act or not on Climate Change is completely disconnected from whether or not you believe in the phenomenon. I've embedded the video below, and although it's educational, it is entertaining...a low budget Bill Nye The Science Guy if you will. In all seriousness it's a compelling argument about risk and I'm glad I saw it so I hope you will also watch it. And think hard on it too. Thank you.