Climate Change
08 Sep 2010

I HAVE ALWAYS HAD A FOOT in both camps of spirituality and ecology. But I have to say that spirituality has always taken precedence over ecology. It is what I was born with and something that has always remained the focus of my life. When I immersed myself in ecology, I always found it rather depressing. Not because of the prognosis being put out about Earth's destruction, but because ecology itself was basically materialism in a new light. I wrote an article on this back in January last year called Spirituality vs Ecology.

I always saw the ecological perspective as something that I had to force myself to adopt because it was the responsible thing to do, whereas spirituality was something that came more naturally. But what can you do when scientists show that the planet faces melt-down due to carbon emissions? You have to respond. You have to push for a reduction in your carbon footprint and that of your community, your nation and your planet.

But lately, for the first time, I have started to examine some of the evidence for global warming. I never realized just how weak and contrived that evidence is, nor that this global warming movement appears to be a political one than a scientific one.

I am not saying that I am a climate change denier, only that the cause of climate change may not have very much to do at all with human carbon emissions. And even climate change itself is not a simple warming process — temperature measurements around the world have shown, in the last decade, that temperatures have actually dropped. (Personally, I believe that the sun is by far the largest influence on climate change — thank you for the info Geoff — whereas the sun's influence is dismissed by most global-warming scientists.)

So now I find myself in the same category of deniers as oil company executives and other big multinationals who did not wish to have carbon caps and carbon taxes on their products. This is a category that I once labelled as ignorant, a category akin to those who once denied the link between cigarettes and lung cancer.

I actually feel a tiny bit guilty taking this stance, but I have to go with the science. Anyone who denies global warming is automatically assumed not to care for the planet, but this is not the case. I still believe in the principles of ecology, but just feel that the global warming movement has hijacked the ecology movement for its own political ends.