Should we care about climate change?

In thinking about climate change, we should attempt to cut through the hype and moral preening to get at the basic issues.

While much has been written about climate change, we have never seen anyone explain why we should care. This moral imperative that we should care is predicated on the idea that man-made climate change should be dealt with. But why?

The planet has been here four billion years. Humans, 200,000. And, humans have been industrial since the 18th century. We are a mere drop in the bucket in the long history of the earth.

It seems almost presumptuous that we could have such a profound effect in such a sort amount of time, but that's what environmentalists claim. Now granted, we do pollute. And that has measurable effects. But that's a separate moral question.

The moral question we are considering is, should we care about climate change? What if we chose not to care? Assuming environmentalists are correct, what would happen?

The earth would warm. Deserts would expand. Places like Northern Canada, Siberia, and Greenland would become more habitable and fertile. Eventually, these also would also turn into deserts. All the ice would be melted. Ultimately, the human race would die out. 

The presumption is that this is bad and must be fixed. We ask, why? Why is it bad? What is the moral imperative that human life should be preserved? The planet will go on without us. Why are we so important? Why shouldn't we go extinct?

"Of all species that have existed on Earth, 99.9 percent are now extinct. Many of them perished in five cataclysmic events." In other words, extinction is the norm. Animals and plants come and go. And nearly all of them have come and gone before we even arrived on the planet.

So even if all life dies out, what exactly is the problem? Is that bad? Well, the earth will once again do what it's always done, produce life. In a few billion years, the planet will thrive again, and there will be not a single piece of evidence that we ever existed.

So we ask again, why should we accept the moral imperative that we must care about climate change? If the reason is that human life shouldn't die out, we would have to see it demonstrated why this is true.

This cannot be demonstrated without an inherent appeal to a system of morality. Humanity is superior. This morality would place humans in a marked status above other life. But the typical environmentalist would probably deny that the human race is superior. Nevertheless, they want it to survive. Why?

The answer is not biological. There is no biological justification for humanity to live. There is no moral justification for humanity to live. There is no reason at all that any life should live. 

We would suggest that the reason is either religious or political.

Religious in that most religions, especially Christianity, place humanity in a pre-eminent position. For example:

Ps. 8:3-8 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? 

5 You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. 6 You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: 7 all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, 8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

Thus the pre-eminence of man might be a vestige of religion persisting as an unchallenged premise in the environmental movement, even though they may reject the tenets of religion, still maintain a value system derived from religion,

Or the underlying motivation could be political. What if climate change is simply a convenient excuse to effect political change? What if the utility of the issue of climate change is simply a convenient excuse to justify the installation of a preferred political system?

We could speculate why this might be. Suffice to say, environmentalism is clearly all about control. Typically environmentalists want to legislate peoples' behaviors, their buying choices, the equipment cars must have, and how warm or cool they must keep their houses.

Those who have power get to control those who don't. They get to control other peoples' lifestyles, values, choices, and money. Lots of money. This is their vision for utopia.

Some have suggested that the maximum number of humans that should be allowed is 500,000,000. Those with power will be the deciders of who live and who dies. They will decide who gets what and how much. They know better than anyone else.

They are smarter than the average person. The average person cannot make informed decision with the welfare of the whole in view. They don't have enough information. Central control is required.

We would conclude that there is no reason at all to fix climate change except for the possibility of implementing a socialist utopia.