Don't Sweat It!

Retired newspaper columnist Charley Reese hasn’t really retired, he’s just not on the payroll of the Orlando Sentinel anymore. Fortunately for us, his columns keep popping up on the internet.

I was delighted when I saw Charley’s piece Don’t sweat over cries about global warming, because it so closely reflects my views on the subject. Basically, Charley reminds us that there’s nothing we human beings can do to alter the climate.

He writes, “It takes a monstrously large ego to presume to see into the future and to pretend that one can change the course of Earth’s climate. We have no control over the amount of energy the sun radiates; we have no control over Earth’s magnetic field; and we have no control over Earth’s volcanoes. We have no control over the Earth’s atmosphere. What humans inject into it amounts to little more than a cosmic passing of gas.”

Bravo! And right on! Of course, this doesn't mean we should be oblivious to the impact we have on the environment. Less pollution is good. More re-cycling is good. Let's just not get silly about how much we really affect the environment.

Charley suggests that we’d do better to pay attention to our families, work in our gardens, read some good books, and listen to some beautiful music.

Alas, my only beef with Charley’s column of June 7, 2007, was his cynicism when he wrote, “…Earth’s climate will be the same. Most everything will be the same. The babble will go on. The decayed culture of America will continue to rot.”

While I share Charley’s concern about a decaying culture in America, that IS something we can affect. We Americans would do well to re-focus our concerns from fears of global warming to finding ways to stem the tide of a decaying culture and help restore the U.S.A. to the greatness our country enjoyed not so very long ago.