How does it make you feel and what goes in your mind when I say, “Cleaning up air pollution may strengthen global warming.”? “Bacteria are evolving to eat the plastic we dump in the oceans”. “Some corals are flourishing in a time of global warming”. “Coal and gas are far more harmful than nuclear”.
All of the above is true, it is supported by scientists. Scientists are fallible humans who are just trying to figure things out in the constant tug of war of deficit and surplus of information. It’s a learning process. I for one feel lost, what do I do with this information? I feel polarized just like Mulder and Scully from the X-files, chasing after the truth, sometimes ending up lost along the way, wanting to believe. The good news is that at least we know more. With the pace at which we are working, I will be arrogant enough to say that we will figure things out within my lifetime. I’d rather be hopeful than scared.
I like how Zat Rana puts it, “Uncertainty isn’t a condition to be avoided, but a tool for better decisions. ”
Are you arrogant or hopeful?
I’d also read:
anujasawant.com 
It makes me hopeful, but also very angry. Angry, because it reminds me of why we have these problems in the first place. I have ranted plenty on my own blog about how environmentalists caused a massive increase in the amounts of CO2 by blocking the deployment of nuclear power for the past forty years. And I am enraged by people who throw away their plastic on beaches, along roadsides and in the countryside – which is how most of the plastic that ends up in the ocean gets there. Every week I collect plastic waste that has been dumped on the roadside outside my house – I usually collect a large bag full, and that is just from outside my house. Grr. Angry!
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I feel you, Steve. I’ve been angry and have said things to people in anger. I eventually lost the anger. It transformed into empathy. That led me to find ways to help people understand the issues so that they take action. On second thought, I do get angry when someone doesn’t let me do the right thing. Once, when I was checking out at a grocery store, I took out my cloth bags to put all the stuff in it. It was my first time using cloth bags in a self-check out lane. It was really confusing for me and apparently also for the machine detecting the bags and the products. I was OK with the confusion because that was my first time. However, there was someone with me who got mad at me for fussing over plastic bags. I get mad when I say no to things which harm the environment and someone doesn’t take it seriously.
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