Question: how do you feel about global warming/pollution?

Nathan Langford answered on 28 Jun 2012:

Hi hollisterchicken,

I think global warming (and clean energy) is perhaps the single most important problem facing scientists and all of society today. If we don’t start making major changes right now, then we are going to face really big consequences in 40 or 50 years.

The problem is that fixing it is going to be hard and there are lots of big companies that might lose money, at least in the short term, as we try. And politicians are really scared of making big changes that will upset these sorts of companies, because they will be blamed if some people lose their jobs and some companies lose money. But what is the point of having money and jobs, if we damage the planet that we live in and we use for food?

You see, deep down, people care most about the things that affect them. So politicians don’t really care about 40 or 50 years – most of them won’t even be alive then. They care much more about getting re-elected and the elections come up in just a couple of years.

But we *will* be alive in 40 or 50 years (at least, I hope to be). So we have to be the ones fighting to make the changes. And the only way we can make politicians care about it is by showing them that it really will affect whether they get reelected.

We have to make the choice.

If you’re interested in thinking more about this sort of thing, I would recommend that you might like to look at an online organisation called “avaaz.org”.

Cheers,
Nathan.