Separating Global Warming from Global Pollution

By David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri)

The pollution of our natural environment, the decline of the quality of our air, water and soils, the destruction of numerous ecosystems and consequent loss of species is an obvious fact that can be easily documented. We usually don’t have to go much further than our own immediate environment or nearby countryside to see the tell tale signs of this, whether it is the decline of our forests, the garbage in our parks and streets, or the dirty air and noise of our cities. One might have to travel further in the United States than in India to do this, but it doesn’t take much effort if one wants to make it.

We can also look to our childhood memories or talk to our parents about how much nicer our natural environment used to be in terms of the plants, animals and atmosphere in what are now rapidly becoming the good old days, at least for Mother Earth. There may be some areas left that are pristine and much that is now being protected, but most of the forests have been cut and even the normal weather vagaries can cause considerable damage to the altered or depleted landscape, climate changes notwithstanding.

Yet the ecological realm today is dominated by another debate, which is that of global warming. The question is whether this environmental degradation through global pollution may cause global warming or possibly global cooling or neither. However, we should note that global warming is a separate issue and much more difficult to prove or disprove than global pollution.

Global warming has become, it appears by the amount of press and political gatherings, like that at Copenhagen recently, the main issue and the primary global environmental problem, causing passion and vehemence on both sides. The more obvious problem of global pollution and the more immediacy needed to deal with its effects can unfortunately be obscured by this debate. Even if global warming may not be occurring or may not be so rapid, global pollution is staring us in the face and damaging our own lives with an impact on to future generations.

Documenting global warming at a scientific level is a monumental task, quite unlike our ability to observe global pollution and the loss of habitats. Our historical recorded temperature observations are only a few hundred years’ old, with changing devices and urban environments that can affect the data. Looking at tree rings throughout the world is another tricky method requiring large amounts of data, and it also cannot take us back so far in time. Trying to uncover the climate changes through examining ice cores is such as those in Greenland is tedious and also may require a number of years of comparative study from various sites to get it right, and the results may prove inconclusive. While most scientists today seem to accept global warming and a probable human cause for it, some scientists, whose credentials cannot be entirely dismissed, do not accept it.

When we see the massive dying of trees in the western United States and Canada, one could point to global warming as the reason. But pollution and human interference with the forests could just as well be the primary cause. Whatever the cause, it is the trees that are suffering.

Yet whether pollution causes global warming, it does not result in anything good and has many other negative consequences. Clearly it needs to be reduced. We need not heave a sigh of relieve thinking that global warming may not get us after all, while global pollution creeps into our bloodstreams, kitchens, and the air that we breathe in any case.

The atmosphere covers a large area of many miles above the Earth that can absorb many pollutants and which is hard to measure. However, our agriculture depends upon on the mere upper three feet of the soil, which is a comparatively miniscule and that can easily absorb and hold pollutants, adding them directly to our food chain. Our fresh water resources, though deeper than our soils, similarly are much smaller than the atmosphere and can more quickly be affected by pollutants of various types.

Of course, end of the world catastrophic ecological disasters are more fascinating and may make better media news and even better motivation to get people to change. I doubt whether such end of the world events caused by God or nature, are likely to occur, even if global warming does occur. Most likely we will have to clean up our own act and correct our own karma. This means to clean up the toxins in our minds, air, bodies and cities that we have also spread to the countryside. It is likely that future generations will still be cleaning up after our ecological ineptitude centuries down the road.

The coming centuries may bring earthquakes, plagues or other environmental problems that cause great damage and loss of life. These have occurred in all centuries anyway and the twenty-first century is unlikely to be immune to them. World Wars like in the twentieth century, but with a more destructive technology, are not impossible either. So even without global warming, we have much to guard ourselves against.

I would myself be inclined to believe that global warming is a fact, just by the observations of my own life and what scientists seem to say about melting glaciers and icecaps. However, I am not a scientist and cannot claim to be an expert in the field. But global warming may not be as crucial or as separate an issue as global pollution. It is also likely that in reducing global pollution we will not only improve or urban air and the state of the forests, but reduce any possibility of global warming should that be occurring as well.

Therefore, I would suggest delinking global warming from the first and greater issue of global pollution and habitat destruction. We need to do something about this, regardless of whether it causes global warming or not. Whether a poison in your house may cause the house to be warmer or colder doesn’t matter if it harms your health and that of your family. The toxic environment that people live and work in today and their lives out of harmony with nature, particularly in urban areas, which includes a lot of mental toxicity through excess exposure the disturbed and artificial media world, will have major negative effects on our long term societal well-being. This may already be beginning.

We are already seeing a decline in intelligence (school test scores) and longevity starting to occur in the USA, with certain diseases like diabetes and heart disease increasing among the youth who are getting
progressively more obese. The cause may not be global warming but the toxic state of our physical and psychological environments, with junk food, junk media and artificial entertainment that removes our children from anything natural is a cause.

We do need to reduce dependency on fossil fuels (for political reasons also) and other pollutant energy sources, protect the natural environment and try to bring our societies more back in harmony with nature relative to our diet, life-style, exercise patterns and even religious and political views.

Unfortunately, the issue has become global warming rather than the more obvious problem of global pollution and habit destruction. Even if there is no major global warming, our civilization is in big trouble for the damage it is causing both to our natural environment and to the organic structure of society and functioning of our own bodies, minds and senses.

So let us not get sidetracked. There is a real danger to our natural and urban environments through the unnatural way that we live. It is necessary to change that as soon as possible, for our own immediate well-being, for the sake of our natural environment. The same factors that may perhaps increase global warming are certainly causing more immediate problems of global pollution. We need to clean up our act in any case and the processes that we need to will largely be the same whether we are dealing with global pollution or global warming.