There are many instances throughout human history in which people have mistakenly believed something to be a fact and in the end were proven terribly wrong. It would seem that "The Allegory of the Cave" grasps human behavior perfectly because when people are provided with concrete evidence that disproves something that they believe to be true, they are most likely going to turn a blind eye and ignore the facts. In their stubborn refusal to see the truth they may even accuse you of being crazy or of distorting facts to fit some sinister agenda.
One of the most striking false persceptions that people have clung to for quite some time is that climate change was just some crazy thoery concocted by tree hugging scientists trying to pass their own agenda. You had United States senators that would loudly dispute scientific evidence proving that climate change is a result of human behavior. A major portion of the scientific community has been in agreement that something must be done before the world faces global catashtrophe due to our addiction to gas guzzling cars and just plain inefficient means of consuming energy. It has taken years for people to finally come to a consensus that there is indeed something wrong with our enviroment. There have been proven increases in temperatures world wide and glaciers around the world are melting at an increasingly alarming rate. It seems that just about every other day we encounter articles in our daily newspapers about drastic changes occuring through out our planet that are speculated to have something to do with rising temperatures. The most shocking thing I've found is that there are still those out there that adamantly refuse to believe the truth of what is happening to our world. They argue that the planets temperatures have been fluctuating for billions of years and that this is a normal behavior for our planet. They dispute the consensus of the scientific community as based on biased experiments and studies. The truth is that people just refuse to change their everyday behaviors. It is much more expensive to buy that energy efficient Prius or for our country to invest in renewable resources like wind and solar energy. There are also still developing countries that are extremely dependant on "dirty" energy sources and they are developing so quickly that it's inconvenient and not cost effective to change the way energy is consumed. In China the government actually reports unsafe breathing levels on a consistent basis and that should be proof enough that many countries are not doing nearly enough. Forunately there has recently been a change in the attitudes of many on climate change people are now willing to work a little harder to improve our world. Yet there are still many people would rather live blindly in a fantasy where all is well instead of taking the energy to tackle the tough issues that stand before us.
No comments:
Post a Comment