As I explained in last month’s ‘Monthly Reminder,’ I’ve started this new monthly feature because if I someday get funding, and start releasing my ideas, I don’t ever want to hear anyone say “WOW! Why didn’t you tell us your ideas were that good!”
Because (using that Ralph Kramden reference once again) I’d be like: “Bang! Zoom! What part of ‘saving the planet’ didn’t you understand? What part of ‘best ideas and strategies’ was confusing you?”
Yes, I really do believe I’ve got the best ideas and strategies and overall thinking concerning how to save the planet. But that, plus two fives, will get me a ten. Bottom line: no one’s interested. Fine. Message received. Just don’t say I never warned you how important it is that I get funding so I can get my ideas out there and have some say, some semblance of a soapbox.
Also, don’t get thrown by that phrase “saving the planet.” Don’t take it too literally. As former Vice President Al Gore explained once in a New York Times op-ed (“Moving Beyond Kyoto,” July 1, 2007):
Our home — Earth — is in danger. What is at risk of being destroyed is not the planet itself, but the conditions that have made it hospitable for human beings.
Sometimes, the way I explain it is it’s not the planet that’s at risk, it’s the biosphere.
If we hadn’t gained the awareness that certain chemicals we were producing and releasing into the atmosphere were eating away at Earth’s ozone shield, for example, we wouldn’t have the Montreal Protocol (1987). Things would’ve just kept getting worse and worse, until eventually, oops, no ozone shield. The planet itself would still be intact. However, the impact of losing the ozone shield would make a major meteor impact (of the sort that’s believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs) look like a sneeze.
But let me get back to that quote from Gore’s 2007 New York Times op-ed. Because even that isn’t a good way to explain the dangers we’re up against. To give just one illustrative example, if climate change were to cause sea level to rise to the point where eighty percent of the state of Florida were underwater (in which case, many highly populated areas all around the world, too, would be underwater), the planet itself might still be habitable; but so what, Florida is underwater! Get my point? It’s not a matter of the planet going poof. When the dinosaurs were wiped out, the planet wasn’t. But they were!
Bottom line: I like using that phrase “saving the planet.” It’s a good catch-all. But don’t get confused by it.