Have you analyzed how YOU feel about global warming?

It can hardly have escaped anyone that “going green” is a very trendy subject right now. In the wake of Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth celebrities and average citizens alike are doing what they can to lead a more eco friendly life.

As our entire western lifestyle is more or less built upon an endless supply of natural resources like oil and coal the going is somewhat tough right now. And to make matters worse there are also people who like to do everything in their power to spread the word that global warming isn’t happening at all – or at least they stress that any changes possibly taking place right now aren’t caused by humanity.

In other words they want to reduce the problems of unsustainable lifestyle, pollution and global warming to actually being some kind of luxury problem. Merely a fad that smart marketers are now making a quick buck from – selling everything from carbon emission rights to new kinds of light bulbs.

Some would almost have you believe that the green movement is nothing more than some kind of new age religion.

A very good site to visit if you want to learn more about what really gives in this debate is how to talk to a climate sceptic. In fact, I would almost consider this mandatory reading before making any public comment about global warming and climate change.

Besides the common arguments and fallacies discussed (in great detail and fully referenced) at the above site an attitude I have come across often enough is something like.

“It doesn’t really matter -  we will end up destroying earth anyway.”

The best explanation for that kind of black and white reasoning I can come up with is that it is used as a kind of mental self defense. A person expressing something along those lines have probably understood the very real threats to our environment perfectly well.

Seeing how the western lifestyle is the cause of many of these problems the person is thus faced with a delicate dilemma: On the one hand he wants to be a good citizen and do what he can to help, but this might on the other hand mean having to face the difficulty of actually changing the lifestyle he really can’t even imagine being without.

One way to solve this mental conflict is to whip out the “it doesn’t matter anyway” argument, which essentially is used to declare yourself powerless in the matter. However, in reality it is nothing but a rather poor excuse for not having to do anything about your lifestyle.

Because learning how to go green is by no means impossible. Like anything worthwhile it will naturally take some time and effort to implement, so we had better start by doing what we can today.

The vast majority of climate scientists agree that the accelerated change in climate we are now experiencing is to a significant extent caused by human activities. If we don’t make any changes to our way of living it is not a question of if we are indeed facing some kind of disaster, but how quickly it will become a reality and exactly where it will have the most devastating effects.

So in conclusion – no, going green can definitely not be reduced to something that you do purely out of personal vanity. If eco friendly living happens to make you feel better about yourself that is just a nice bonus.

Photo credit: ItzaFineDay