Agreeing on Our Changing Climate

Where do we Americans see climate change? In the past it has ranked near the bottom by past voters of being of great concern. Despite the growing scientific reports have increasingly documented the impacts of increased temperature, weather extremes, carbon dioxide emissions and other human caused environmental impacts. Republicans have been quick to see this problem as job killing, tax increasing and regulatory over reach. Back in 2009 House Democrats passed a “cap and trade,” measure, however, such a tax was passed in the Senate since it was not attractive and am efficient pollution control.

Most scientist think climate change is cause by humans and threatens future human health. However there is considerable amount of Americans who either do not see or deny climate change as a problem.

Conservative Republicans question global warming science. Also many new members of Congress dispute that humans have anything to do with climate change. However, we have been burning records amounts of fossil fuels that create CO2. One challenge is that the full impacts of today’s greenhouse gases have a time lag and will not be felt too many decades latter. In a 2010 National Academy Sciences survey of 1372 climate scientists and found that 97.5% agreed that humans are contributing to climate change.

While the global debate is still being debated here in the U.S. the rest of world are in agreement that humans are threatening our natural systems with dangerous amounts of greenhouse gases. The US is far more divided. An October 2010 poll shows in the last 4 years Americans dropped from 79 to 59 percent believing there is solid evidence of climate change. Just 38 percent Republican believed in this environmental challenge.

Instead of what we do not agree on, why do we not work on conserving more and wasting less. What part of being conservative am I missing?

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