Letters to the Editor
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Fear vs. Foresight
>I find it alarming when Lefties start demanding the same kind of orthodoxy, purity and strict adherence to party line that is the hallmark of Fox and the RNC.
I would, too, if that's what was happening with this issue. Had Ms. Paglia shed a photon of light on the issue of the science behind the global warming issue, even to argue with it, or had she shed a photon of light on the politics of how we should be responding to the scientific information we have about global warming, there would not have been this enormous outpouring of letters. Instead, she was pretending to be Mr. Science, only at least HE has a master's degree--in science. She took one geology course many decades ago. Her take on the issue had not one substantive argument. And even her take on "Al Gore's movie" was based on her personal distaste for the subject of a movie that was envisioned, written, and produced by many people--but NOT Al Gore. He and the work he has courageously devoted so much of his life to were the subject of that movie, but it wasn't his movie.
And speaking of courageously facing the future, most of the environmentalists I know, including me, have been assessing future possibilities not out of fear, but to make realistic assessments of what can and should be done to prevent horrible outcomes. That's why many decades ago environmentalists were already looking at the Mississippi River dam and levee system and saying ahem--this is a bad approach which will destroy the wetlands along the river, the estuary at the bottom of the river, and we're definitely going to have catastrophic floods which will destroy cities along the river. Doom and gloom? Look at the flood 10 years ago that destroyed East Grand Forks, MN, at the flood a year and a half ago from a Category 3 hurricane that didn't do much damage until the storm surge breached the levees, and tell me about those doom and gloom predictions, which weren't made based on fear but on a prudent assessment of likelihoods using actual science. I heard so many people saying New Orleans should never have been built below sea level in the first place, but guess what--it wasn't. The city literally sunk with the weight of overdevelopment, exactly as those "doom and gloom prophets" had predicted, not because people were brave to overdevelop there but because it's human nature to impetuously move full steam ahead without foresight--exactly the macho approach that Ms. Paglia admires.
Real ostriches may not face the world with knowledge, courage, and sound planning, but they face it with their eyes open to reality. It's people like Camille Paglia who bury their heads in the sand, fearful to look beyond the first ten minutes of a movie because it might require some bravery on their parts to face the facts. Like Ms. Paglia, Rachel Carson didn't have children, but she took responsibility for doing something to protect future generations. Paglia is probably right that we humans can't change the physical universe. But we can, and have, altered our own planet in ways that make our cities and the children living in them exceptionally vulnerable. And the truly brave among us, if we care about children and other powerless human beings and wildlife, are willing to fight to protect them. It's the cowards burying their heads in the sand who are staying in the dark out of fearfulness and complacency.