Friday, Chicago, Illinois

Among the assignments that I give to the students in my class at Purdue, includes watching a documentary whose purpose is to persuade people. One of the obvious choices, of course, is Al Gore’s award winning “An Inconvenient Truth.” The film is quite a simple production really. It’s a recording of a Power Point presentation that Mr. Gore gives to an audience, making his case that the earth, in his words, “has a fever.” It is Exhibit A in the modern case that Global Warming is real and dangerous. His statistics are impressive; the case he makes is very persuasive. But of course we’re well aware that there are many skeptics who utterly reject his proposition that we are dead meat in a few decades.

As a casual observer, without personal scientific knowledge, I can only observe what is happening around me. Although I should add that, compared to the average citizen, I do travel around the country a great deal. This coming week, for example, I will be in Denver, Los Angeles, New York City, and Des Moines, Iowa within a span of five days. And since I’ve always struggled with anxiety about flying, you can be sure I will be looking out my window at the weather systems blowing across the country.

Here in the Midwest our winter has than anything but warming. In fact, we’ve had six inches more snow for this month so far than is normal. It’s 7 degrees as I sit here. Making matters worse, there have been record-setting, devastating floods swamping dozens of communities throughout the Midwest. In our community, the city golf course still sits under several feet of water! And of course who knows what’s coming next?

If I came away from Al Gore’s presentation persuaded about anything, it is that the climate is unnervingly unstable. Whether the globe is warming, cooling, or naturally cycling between the extremes, I know this: I am ever reminded that we are at its mercy. I try to do my part to lessen my a footprint on the earth. But it seems like so small an impact.

This capacity of human effort is just staggering. Today people on a ship at sea fired a missile that hit a fast moving target reentering the atmosphere. The target was a communications satellite that some other people sent up some years ago. Do I really take such things casually? Am I that blase about human beings constructing an orbiting space station? Do I take for granted that human beings have enabled me to sit in my house and communicate on the Internet? It’s mind-boggling and I really don’t want to lose my fascination with what we are able to do.

However…

All these accomplishments, as well as my very existence, can be wiped out in seconds by an earthquake, tornado or, more pathetically, by human caprice and stupidity that pollutes nature and uses its resources for cruelty, hatred and violence, and in the name of God no less! And it is this last reality that is the true inconvenient truth!