16 Jun 2007
Civics 101 - The Environment
We here at DimeBrothers love nature. It's the environment we're confused about. Lemme explain.
Back in the 60's and 70's people began to notice that they lived in the world, and more specifically, on Earth (Terra). They thought, rather unselfishly, "Let's not trash this thing right away - we might need it later on." Presidents Johnson and Nixon jumped on board the environmental bandwagon and we thought to ourselves how progressive we were.
In the 1980's the focus turned to carbon dioxide, and how it was filling up the earth, and fluorocarbons stuff, and how all that was killing our beautiful Ozone layer, without which gravity was likely to stop working and we'd all be thrust off the face of the planet and have to live on Mars (which surely we'd figure out how to do by 1997).
And life continued.
In the 1990's the focus turned to deforestation, and how all the trees on the planet would be cut down to make paper or fire to roast marshmallows over. Brazil would soon be Kansas.
And life continued.
Sometime early this decade, though, the whole thing got all muddled up. Suddenly, it was actually Ozone (O3) that was hurting the environment. (Unfortunately, no one bothered putting anything in any of those news articles to help clarify why Ozone was bad but the Ozone layer was good.)
And deforestation was still a problem, but some of it was due to poor landowners selling logging rights to feed their families.
And the polar ice caps were melting. But what was the effect on algae growth - and doesn't algae growth help regulate temperatures - and how much higher are the oceans now than they were 30 years ago?
Alas! Please don't take these questions as cynicism. We here at DimeBrothers love our environment and think protecting it is worthwhile. We understand that impervious surfaces (pavement and houses and the such) affect rivers, animals, and ultimately, us. We recycle. Paul even won an Earth Day drawing contest in 6th grade. Countywide, too!
But our questions remain. We are searching for answers, but not too hard (maybe we should do a two minute internet search).
We ask you, dear reader, to write in and let us know what we don't know.
Help us to know more about our civic responsibility to the environment!