This morning I read a "blurb" (it wasn't really a complete article, just small box of text with a picture) in the Star Tribune about a new portion of the Arctic that has melted. I expected the text to be something about higher ocean temperatures, carbon footprints, and what will happen if the polar ice caps keep melting at this rate (it's bad, they say, very very bad).
However, as I began to read the blurb, I was surprised and somewhat disturbed to discover the true subject matter -- the potential for more widespread and cheaper trading due to decreased transportation costs if this portion of the Arctic stays melted! Glory of glories! While dozens of U.S. cities will be flooded and uninhabitable, at least it will be easier to to get lead-infested toys from China to the sad American children who have been orphaned by floods and hurricanes! There's always a silver lining.
I'm not even much of an environmentalist. Sure, I turn lights out when I leave the room, I recycle (mostly), and I like to buy organic and locally grown produce when feasible, but it's not my soapbox. Al Gore and Leo (and more recently Paris Hilton) have helped me come around a bit more to acknowledge that environmentalism is less remote of a cause than I once considered it. Environmentalists used to irritate me in the way that animal rights activists still do* -- "Is that really the best cause you can come up with? In the face of vast and immediate human suffering, is this really what you care about the most?" I have come a long way and am no longer bugged by environmentalism**, and have learned some things about how the things I am concerned about (poverty, disease, children dying from easily preventable illnesses, basic human rights) are related to efforts undertaken to reverse the course we have charted for Earth.
Reading this piece in the Star Tribune, I almost felt pangs of environmentalist in me. At first, I could not believe what I was reading...it seemed like something that would be on Weekend Update. "Fear not! Researchers have determined that, even if we are unable to halt or reverse global warming, it's ok because we'll be able to get more crappy shit from China at even cheaper prices!" Now, I feel both angry and saddened-- angry because I know some morons that read that piece will now actually believe there is an upside to global warming the melting of the Arctic and saddened because the fact that such an article was even written means that some people have given up altogether on trying to stop and/or undo the human contribution to global warming and have started to seriously consider ways humans can make our lives even easier once there is no ice left on the planet.
While I obviously don't object to this being in the newspaper (for me, 1st Amendment still trumps environmentalism), I do hope this won't actually be the way that the conversation about protecting the earth starts to turn. "Let's do what we can, but if that doesn't work, 3 cheers for Dora the Explorer with her little poisonous backpack on sale half-price at Walmart!" Somehow that slogan just doesn't flow as well as "Think Globally, Act Locally (or Watershed or whatever.)
*Animal rights activists should not come to my house. There are some very yippy dogs that live next door that woke me up at 7 a.m. this morning. They are lucky to still be alive.
**I am still bugged by some environmentalists. For example, people that want me to waste 5 gallons of water to fully wash out a small plastic peanut butter jar so that it can be recycled or people that judge me for throwing a piece of notebook paper in the garbage.
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