This is a super sexy issue – blood for oil, shady international cartels, billion-dollar lobbying efforts, ferocious environmental debates… this is an issue that has it all. It also offers a perfect example of how we constantly work against ourselves in the quest for sustainable solutions.

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The way lobbyists, hard-core activists, politicians and especially Donald Trump & Co. portray it, this is a black and white issue: fossil fuels v. renewable energy. This is generally where the argument gets uber heated and people on both sides get really ticked off. This is also where, as in most arguments, everyone develops tunnel vision and stops listening.

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We can avoid the drama if, from the jump, all sides understand that a successful outcome depends on cooperation, collaboration, and a little bit of patience. This is a process. Here’s the thing: fossil fuels and renewable energy sources are not mutually exclusive, at least at this point in the process. Picture a large brass scale like the scales of justice. The left side of the scale represents fossil fuels, and the right side represents renewable energy. Currently, the scale is tipped toward fossil fuels because renewable sources don’t yet provide enough energy. But, as we begin to implement an intelligent energy shift, the scales will slowly begin to balance, then begin tipping toward renewable energy.

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Let’s go ahead and get this out of the way now: We will not debate anyone on whether global warming is a real thing. We simply refuse to waste our time arguing about this because the highly agenda-driven, volatile arguments are a complete waste of time.

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This is a common sense issue. Period. To suggest global warming is some sort of elaborate deception is absurd. We don’t need a study to tell us that when billions of people live on a planet, they have an affect on it. We don’t need a study to tell us that fewer toxins in the air are better than more. We don’t need a study to tell us that we can’t continue to act like our natural resources will last forever. We don’t need a study to tell us that taking no environmental action poses a dangerous risk to our planet, our health, and our international strength.

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< Sidebar: Global warming refers to earth’s overall temperature, which is rising. That’s just a fact. Global warming, in turn, causes the climate to change. Climate change causes extreme weather patterns, rising sea levels, shifting jet streams, and plenty of other things that are really bad. As a result of climate change, floods, droughts, ice storms, and heat waves become more frequent and more intense. Essentially, the extremes become even more extreme. So, when people use the fact that parts of America have historic cold and icy weather any given year as proof that there is no global warming, they are inadvertently proving the exact opposite. This annoys us, so we just wanted to clear it up. >

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Call us crazy, or bleeding-heart liberals, or anything else, but we care about the tens of thousands of dolphins, whales and other marine animals that have been harmed by the first Trump administration’s approval of deafening seismic surveys off the Atlantic coast. We care that heat has wiped out Elkhorn and staghorn coral on Florida reefs, meaning they no longer play any significant role in their ecosystem. We care about the sage grouse that is now endangered in the American West. < If you are making fun of us, Google a picture of this precious little thing and we promise you will care too. >

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We care that, in the spring of 2020, California, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico, and Idaho had to suffer through the first megadrought in over 1,200 years. We care that as the air gets warmer over time, people in central Appalachia are more vulnerable to more extreme rainfall and the flooding. We care that two massive Antarctic glaciers are breaking free, perhaps initiating the collapse of the entire West Antarctic ice sheet, and that the world’s largest iceberg A-23A (which weighs nearly one trillion tons and is around the size of Rhode Island) may possibly hit the island of South Georgia, a refuge for penguins, seabirds, and seals. We care that our planet is now registering the highest temperatures on record, to the point that some places on earth are now too hot for humans to live.

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… especially at a time when the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that the world will warm 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels in 2028; when a report from NASA revealed that global sea level rose faster than expected in 2024, mostly because of ocean water expanding as it warms, or thermal expansion; and when a report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine says that carbon dioxide, methane and other planet-warming greenhouse gases “are warming Earth’s surface and changing Earth’s climate” and are “harming the health and welfare of people in the United State (and this is “beyond scientific dispute.”)

 

Seriously, how in the world could anyone not care about these things?