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| No | 72% | 131 votes | Total: 183 votes | |
| Yes | 28% | 52 votes |
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Add to FavoritesMany different things have taken center stage as the media's fall guy wearing a black t-shirt that says, "I'm to Blame for Global Warming" on the front with "and I don't care" on the back.
There was a similar trend with cancer a few years ago. I will not disrespect cancer victims, survivors or their families here. But I will draw attention to the medical, scientific, and entertainment communities and their whistle-blowing, finger-pointing and bandwagon jumping.
A few years ago, Everything Caused Cancer. And the very things indicted for causing cancer are the very same things lauded as wonders of the modern world. Cell phones, microwave ovens, even television have all put their toes on the white line and stood in a line up. Behind the one-way mirror in the little dark witness room are doctors, lawyers, celebrities and politicians.
"That's the onethe one that did it, the one that gave me cancer."
Now, it's Global Warming's turn. It's a given this is not only a very serious issue, but it is The Issue of a This Generation. And it's not a matter of whether this generation will pass the problem to the next. At stake is whether there will be anything at all to pass on.
This is a problem that will not go away. This is everyone's problem. But, has the destruction of the extended family contributed to climate change?
The answer is, singularly, No.
As mentioned, there are many, many guilty parties here. But to say that the breakdown of the family has contributed to the climate change is like saying prostitutes contribute to the billion dollar sex trade. Yes, all are party to the crime, but who is responsible?
The War on Drugs was fought and lost in this country's neighborhoods, schools and on its streets. Small-time pushers were put in jail. Zero Tolerance and Three Strikes You're Out was being chanted from preacher's pulpits and politician's podiums. And the drug business is not only still going strong, it is thriving, flourishing. Why? The ugly truth is that any business where money changes hands is consumer driven. There is a customer who wants to buy a product. If you close down one source, he will find another. So, the seller figures, "He's gonna buy it from somebody, so it might as well be us."
So prostitutes and small-time drug pushers are arrested and put in jail. Meanwhile, the customer, (which is your neighbor, relative, teacher, and friend) will just go somewhere else.
So, the same precedent is true of the global warming issue. Everyone was at the party, had a good time, and left a mess. Anyone who used a can of hairspray, deodorant, air freshener, bug spray, etcis guilty. That's everyone, all of us.
The reason our atmosphere has a big hole in it is very simple: Greed.
The Future was bought and sold. Big companies got bigger, corporate America got stronger, and the world became industrialized, civilized.
Now it's time to pay the rent. Our options are pay up or get out. But we don't have the money, and have no place else to go. None of us has any place to go. So, what good is finger pointing at this late stage?
Learn more about this author, Tristan Moorhen.
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Yes
This is an empirical question and in theory it should not be part of an opinion poll. That it has not been the subject of a controlled experiment does not leave us fee to opine at will however, for even without quantifiable data we can still do a thought experiment by imagining a Popperian falsifiable hypothesis, and see where it takes us.
A good place to start is to examine just what the destruction of the extended family, as the initial proposition somewhat overdramatically puts it, actually means. If you go back far enough, extended families referred to blood relatives and their retinues living under the same roof. Breaking them up meant moving these assemblages from single to multiple households. Although the former would have been much larger, shared communal areas and services probably meant that both the square footage and total energy used was considerably less in the larger dwellings. Score one for keeping families together.
But there are other consequences to breaking up extended families. My own extended family no longer lives under the same roof, but we remain very close, visit often, and support each other in myriad ways. Although two of my children live close by and could easily walk or ride bicycles, in fact they, as do most people, add greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel consumption by driving. If families living further apart retain comparable enmeshment, inevitably they will spent even more energy, though it seems more likely that they would reduce contact and consequently the energy used to achieve all those face-to-faces. My other child, lives across the country and his participation in family togetherness is limited to once or twice a year. Still, his infrequent trips do mean more jet fuel than if he lived at home.
Families that break up and do not retain contact, that are destroyed in the terms the present question seems to imply, probably add no more to climate change than already occurred in the move from single dwellings to multiple ones. Still, if this analysis is correct, and mind you it is speculation, there is at least some negative influence on climate traceable to the break up of extended families.
The polling question did not extend to the breakup of nuclear families, but surely fairness would require it be included, and is subject to a similar analysis. Nuclear families do, however, tend to be more contentious when they split than extended families, thus more likely to spend energies and lawyer's fees (who then buy gas-guzzling SUVs).
An answer to the initial question would not be complete, however, without considering the issue of what effect does consumption and consequent greenhouse gas emissions, actually have on climate change. Like the initial poll query, this question is in principle not a subject of opinion but of empirical evidence discoverable by controlled experiment and hypothesis testing, Unfortunately, it is so complex and all the evidence isn't in yet that the experts disagree. If we poll them a large majority agree that increased greenhouse gases does contribute to global warming-thus to climate change-and that man's emission of co2 (carbon dioxide) is large enough to be significant in the overall equation. But we must remember that the issue remains, at bottom, empirical; significant new, unexpected data can change the scientific assessment very quickly.
Still, for the moment, the answer is a hesitant "yes" the breakdown of modern families probably does make a small contribution to climate change.
Before we go (you knew it wasn't going to be that easy, right?) we should note that population growth certainly contributed much more to climate change than the breakdown of families. It may even contribute to that very breakdown by piling people on top of each other, like the overpopulation of rats in the psychology's box. That could mean that prohibitions on birth control and safe abortions may contribute even more and than the destruction of families.
Wouldn't that be ironic!
Learn more about this author, Kendall Furlong.
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