This past week's discussion on the public and specifically congresses denial leading up the hurricane Katrina tragedy, reminded me of another form of denial politicians and big oil companies have been participating in for a long time, the denial that global warming is an issue and needs to be addressed.
Many politicians including George W. Bush, who comes from a large oil company himself, have been denying global warming and global climate change for years. Many have also been attributed to changing scientific documents in order to downplay the effects, emphasizing the "lack of scientific data" and emitting sections of research pertaining to climate change altogether. Because of the lack of attention given to the issue of global warming by politicians and those who have the power to make a difference, the United States remains one of the only countries in the world not committed to changing the amount of carbon dioxide emissions we produce on a daily basis.
One of the arguments highlighted in "Viscous Porosity: Witnessing Katrina" was that the politicians denied the fact that a category 4 or 5 hurricane could occur in New Orleans and therefore took no precautions to prevent a tragedy such as Katrina from occurring and having the effect that it did. Much the same that we as a country have been denying global warming and by not preventing it, the inevitable outcome will be worse than if we would have accepted global warming from the start and done everything possible to prevent further damage to the environment. What can now be done as a country to right our wrong by initially denying climate change? Is it too late to change the mentality of a majority of our country?
