Today's Topic: Deny this.

Image courtesy of Paul / FreeDigitalPhotos.net 

Nathan: Want to hear something depressing?

Holden: Always.

Nathan: This eight-year-old girl in China now has lung cancer because of all the air pollution there, making her the youngest person in the world on record to contract cancer from human produced airborne carcinogens.

Holden: Well at least she’s famous now?

Nathan: ...

Holden: What’s the philosophical/ethical/intellectual issue in this? There’s eight-year-olds dying all over the world. The Chinese are polluting — a lot — and it’s bad. Is there more to it?

Nathan: Yes. Even though 90% of the scientific community believe global warming is real and driven mostly by humans, only 54% of Americans do. And what’s worse, not enough is being done about it. Well, for all you climate change deniers, forget about global warming: let’s worry about this — and by this I mean young children slowly contracting cancer one breath at a time.

Holden: Sure. Let’s worry about it. I’m worried. Where’s it bring us? I doubt the billion people in China will read this and stop polluting just because two Jews are worried.

Nathan: We do have a tendency to do that don’t we.

Holden: We do. What, though, is there to glean? Is it an issue of ethics? Responsibility? Obligation to humanity? Or is it just a painful reality in this day and age?

Nathan: My point is, let’s shift the debate away from climate change/global warming in this country. It’s become so politicized that you can’t even mention global warming to someone on the Right without eyerolls. You can deny global warming because it hasn’t happened yet. The tumors in that poor girl’s lungs? Not so easy.

Holden: Few responses. First, “someone on the Right.”  You are politicizing the issue. Why even break it down like that? Second. Global warming has happened; it is happening. Ask Al Gore (he’ll tell you all about it). I don’t think it’s a matter of intellectual denial; it’s a broader systemic disconnect or, better, indifference. We know that our iPhones, our hamburgers, and our clothing cause the world harm but we do little about it.  

Nathan: Fair enough, but if you look at the people denying global warming it’s not coming from an intellectual place. It’s coming from an, “if I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist,” place.

Holden: I think we’re saying the same thing. The semantics differ. The disconnect is real and terrifying. We’re living in a bubble.

Nathan: We’re gonna need to live in a bubble with all this damn pollution…

Holden: Hopefully it’ll be sturdier than the figurative one in which we live; the bubble of denial we live in is bound to pop and bound to pop in the most disruptive manner.

Nathan: Hopefully it won’t be too late by then to manage the environmental fallout.

Holden: Who’s to say it isn’t too late already? A lot of people that are smarter and more informed than us think it is.

Nathan: Oy.

Thoughts? Questions? An urge to tell us to go to hell? Let us know below.