Addressing Climate Change

Sometimes I print articles that I read on line but then don't have a chance to read them--sometimes for weeks. This is the case with an article in the September 27, 2007 issue of the New York Times OP-ED section. Vaclav Havel, the former president of the Czech Republic and a philosopher and writer, wrote the piece entitled, Our Moral Footprint." I tend to read the articles that he writes because I find him a thoughtful author who will make me think. Far too often I find highly partisan and shrill articles a huge turnoff. Probably because I am always looking for "middle ground," I generally am put off by people on both the left and right whose strident and arrogant words tend to polarize and not invite into thoughtful consideration.

Havel is not like that. He doesn't make grandiose statements about global warming, but states that we need a good dose of "humility and circumspection." I found one paragraph particularly compelling:

Maybe we should start considering our sojourn on earth as a loan. There can be no doubt that for the past hundred years at least, Europe and the United States have been running up a debt, and now other parts of the world are following their example. Nature is issuing warnings that we must not only stop the debt from growing but start to pay it back. There is little point in asking whether we have borrowed too much or what would happen if we postponed the repayments. Anyone with a mortgage or a bank loan can easily imagine the answer.

He eschews simplistic answers and is doubtful that "a problem as complex as climate change can be solved by any single branch of science." He believes that ethical, educational, and ecological training are all needed.
It's a pleasure to read a sane and thoughtful voice about this problem.