Insert Sad Face

It's funny, I've been a writer forever and a gardener for so few years, that it's odd I spend so many waking hours thinking about the latter.

And how working with the soil just a few hours a week can change your viewpoint.

I was having a discussion with my brother a few months ago who turns out to be a "man is not the cause of global warming" person (or just being a naysayer to irk me). Being smarter than me by a long shot he can rattle off all sorts of facts he's read and remembers at his finger tips.

I'm not good at arguing. And I am woefully slow. But when the US government's own Environmental Protection Agency (who has been heavily influenced by an anti-environmental Bush presidency) puts out this Q&A on their site,

Q: Are human activities responsible for the warming climate?
A: Careful measurements have confirmed that greenhouse gas emissions are increasing and that human activities (principally, the burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use) are the primary cause. Human activities have caused the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane to be higher today than at any point during the last 650,000 years. Scientists agree it is very likely that most of the global average warming since the mid-20th century is due to human-induced increases in greenhouse gases, rather than to natural causes.

After our own government doing so much to negate such statements for the last many years, how can this not move you to get on board,?

My wife had this brilliantly simple (but not simplistic) thought:

If I'm right, and human influence is heating up the earth and potentially going to kill us all, then cutting back on carbon emissions may save us.

If you're right and the pollution we toss into the air isn't doing anything to warm the earth and we cut back, we'll just have cleaner air.

Not really a loss.

When you put it down to that simple statement, it sort of makes sense, doesn't it?