Because nothing can’t be politicized nowadays, a meme started making the rounds this week asking why everyone accepted the predictions of the solar eclipse without question. It was meant to chide global warming “deniers” or global warming “enjoyers” like me.
But what the meme creator is missing is that no one was demanding major economic and social changes in order to “prevent” the eclipse. There was no adoption of international treaties meant only to limit the growth of Western economies. Nobody was proposing shutting down entire industries because of the eclipse. Cheaper forms of energy weren’t being replaced with more expensive and less reliable power sources. And nobody wanted to ban certain types of light bulbs for use during the eclipse.
If anything, the eclipse did more to “speed up” climate change–and it was those “most concerned” about it that were doing most of the damage. Consider that Alaska Airlines provided a charter flight that flew into the shadow of the moon over the Pacific Ocean and then went back to the airport from which it took off. Jet fuel was wasted and more carbon was put into the atmosphere just so about 200-people could see the eclipse “first”. A cruise ship company also sent out a boat with Bonnie Tyler singing “Total Eclipse of the Heart”–for people who wanted to be the “last” to experience the eclipse.
Then there were the millions of Americans that drove hundreds and thousands of miles to be in the “path of totality”–and then idled in heavy traffic in towns not able to handle so much congestion. The TV networks that broadcast all of the climate change alarm reports and specials on the horrible future that awaits all of us, broadcast live for several hours from locations all across the country–sending their satellite signals back using trucks idling for hours burning diesel gas. NASA–home of so many of the “concerned climate scientists” flew several planes in the eclipse path (granted, for research purposes). And millions of plastic and chemical-coated “eclipse glasses” are on their way to landfills across the country this week–where they will sit for decades.
And all of this carbon burning and energy usage went toward those “concerned about the environment” to spend about two minutes in the shadow of the moon. Of course, they described it as a “lesson in how fragile our planet is”–oblivious to their own hypocrisy.
