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dioxide into the atmosphere? Are we helping things or are we making a bad situation worse?

Subscribers to the "Natural Cycle" theory will say, "Even if we took drastic measures to reduce emissions, how much impact could we have?" To them I ask simply: What if...? What if our actions DO (or at least COULD) have an impact? Don't we owe it to our children to try? Also, if we DO make a difference and we do NOT try to clean up the carbon... aren't we the Ship of Fools sailing merrily over the falls?

If our actions do not have a significant impact and we try anyway, we're still not hurting anything. Even the most expensive carbon sequestration programs would still move currency around the economy, providing jobs and contributing to market sectors. No harm, no foul.

But what if... what if we could make a difference? What if we caused it? Shouldn't we try to fix it? What if global warming really is a natural cycle but we COULD make a difference? We could smooth out the cycle. We would gain more understanding of our home's atmosphere.

CONCLUSION:
No matter how you slice it, we need to find alternatives to petroleum. Even in the best-case scenarios, the need is there, right now, and it is only getting more important as time progresses. The time to act is now... before the worst case becomes inevitable.

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REFERENC ES:
[1] http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/c cgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.html

Learn more about this author, Christopher S. Knepper.
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