The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has joined in on the absolute insanity surrounding climate change. Last month the DNR removed wording from their website that stated human activity was the main cause of climate change.
The website now says the causes of climate change are “being debated and researched by academic entities outside the Wisconsin DNR.”
When I first read this, I thought it was a joke or maybe an accident. The thought the Wisconsin DNR had been hacked actually crossed my mind.
Then I learned it was real, and the DNR had actually done this purposefully. Before I get to how stupid of a decision this is, let me tell you how wrong it is.
There is an undeniable scientific consensus concerning anthropogenic climate change, or ACC. From 1991 to 2011, among scientific papers expressing a view on ACC, 97.1 percent expressed the consensus view that humans are causing climate change. To say the causes of climate change are “being debated” among scientists and academic entities is about as true as claiming gravity is a theory in contention.
But the folks at the DNR are not the only ones who seem to think they know something the global community of scientists doesn’t. We have politicians in this country — and a president-elect — who blatantly deny scientific evidence of climate change, threatening our society’s future.
If your argument “against” man-made climate change is that it’s “very cold out” (I’m looking at you Jim Inhofe), then you are not qualified to be the chairman of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee. Actually, I genuinely would not trust Inhofe to walk my dog, so you can imagine how I feel about his current office.
But at least Inhofe gets a fat check from the Koch brothers for spreading his contagious idiocy. Contrarily, unless those responsible for the changes at the DNR quickly make amends, the only checks they will be seeing will have to come from somewhere they probably don’t want to look – a new job.
And that brings me to the sheer idiocy of this decision.
It is at least slightly surprising the very department that depends on Earth’s natural resources would make a statement detrimental to Earth’s natural resources. This would literally be like the American Culinary Federation coming out against food safety – it’s just on a new level of unfathomable ignorance.
This is the most pressing issue of our time. In terms of potential action that can be taken, the final hour has come. We must either act now or condemn the future of our planet, and our species, to death.
I know it is exciting to talk about how we are going to “utterly destroy” ISIS, and, to most, it is more interesting to discuss drone strikes than energy regulations, but the simple fact is we must put this issue at the forefront of our policies and discussion, or ISIS won’t even be around for us, or anyone, to worry about.
Kort Driessen ([email protected]) is a freshman majoring in neurobiology.
