Global Warming needs Global Action

I’ve noticed that people are reacting rather locally to global warming. For example, they are covering their local glaciers in blankets to keep them cold. I read another article recently (sorry, can’t find the attribution) about a group of people moving whole colonies of birds (or rather trying to), supposedly because of global warming.

What’s the first word in “Global warming?”

I’m sure we do need to act locally in the sense of driving less, buying more fuel effient cars, recycling and reusing, etc.

We can, perhaps, still affect the causes of global warming. But I doubt we can control the effects much. Precisely because nature is a self-balancing and successful system, I’d generally caution against treating the symptoms randomly by trying to stop glaciers from melting and moving bird colonies. I don’t think we understand the complex intricacies of global weather enough to do much messing with it successfully.

We do, partially, understand what we’ve done wrong to cause the system’s imbalances. Working together as a global community through instruments like the Kyoto treaty is critical. In the meantime, it may not hurt to experiment with blanketing glaciers, but I’d prefer we treat nature like the wild, brilliant, chaotic, resilient, sensitive system it is, and work on our part rather than trying to control the whole thing. I suspect the global weather system is bigger than we are.