Climate Change Isn’t a Problem

Not so long ago, North America shifted into full-blown climate change panic. Although there were multiple causes, the event that seemed to galvanize everything was Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

Fast forward a few years. As the recession takes our eye off the environment, a robust climate change denial movement has gathered steam.

Although trend skeptics (those denying that climate change is happening) are being squelched by evidence, attribution skeptics (those claiming climate change isn’t caused by humans) and impact skeptics (those claiming there are positive environmental impacts from climate change) are going strong.

As University of New South Wales Associate Professor David McKnight notes, there are several reasons why companies like Exxon have had some success playing the global warming denial card. “First, the implications of science are frightening. Second, doubt is an easy product to sell. Third, science is displayed as political orthodoxy rather than objective knowledge, a curiously postmodern argument.”

I’m not here to muddy the water with another piece arguing for the validity of climate science. Instead, I want to forward the case for green thinking, regardless of the political / scientific arguments.

To wit: we need to pick up the pace of our green innovation because it’s the smart economic thing to do.

When I lived in Europe – nearly 20 years ago – we had a curious contraption attached to every shower. You turned on the tap, and it filled an electric ‘kettle’ on the wall. When the kettle was full, it heated to shower temperature. Presto, you had enough hot water for your shower.

This system was incredibly energy efficient, and much ‘greener’ than the water boiler systems we still use in North America. But the Germans didn’t use it because of the enlightened environmental benefits. In a country with exhoribant energy rates, this little shower heater reduced costs. It was an innovation that made sense.

Look around the average European home, and you see similar innovations – light timers in hallways, baseboard power switches that prevent ‘vampire’ power drainage, dual flush toilets. None of these devices were introduced solely to preserve the environment. They were created to spare costly resources.