Why are we even talking about this? Can anybody in Washington actually expect us to believe the world is going to come to an end in 12 years if we do not spend trillions of dollars to end man’s impact on climate? And exactly how are we impacting the climate? CO2
Al Gore certainly convinced a lot of people humankind is the ruin of Planet Earth. Now to correct the problem we have to spend untold trillions of dollars on an unproven solution. Scientists can’t even agree there is a solution, but they would certainly like millions more in grants to study the issue. Now I am sure there will be someone out there who will disagree and come forward saying 96% of scientists agree humans contribute significantly to Climate Change. That is funny because “only 0.3% of published scientists stated in their papers that recent warming was mostly man-made.” Inconvenient Fact 30 from Gregory Wrightstone’s Inconvenient Facts : The science that Al Gore doesn’t want you to know, a book everyone should read.
I digress, the real question for me is, Why should we spend so much money, time and energy on an issue that is so poorly understood, is only hypothesis, and unconfirmed. (except my climate models that predicted 20 years ago the other was to be several degrees warmer by now and in fact is not.) Aren’t there more pressing issues we should spend on? Issues that could potentially save the lives of millions of people. Let’s take one issue, diabetes and associated heart disease. Approximately 610,000 people die from heart disease every year in the United States alone. Another 76,000 die each year from diabetes. Diabetes is a major contributor to heart disease. 7 out of 10 people over 65 with diabetes will die from heart disease. Wouldn’t we be better off spending more money towards improving peoples lives?
A big contributor to the increasing number of diabetics is the amount of sugar we consume. The average American will consume 56 pounds of sugar this year. That is about 70 grams of sugar per day. Doctors recommend no more than 36 grams of sugar per day and 6 grams is equal to one teaspoon of sugar. One of the most popular soft drinks (sodas) available has 43 grams of sugar per serving. Almost all canned foods have large amounts of added sugar. Just start checking the labels and you will be surprised at the amount of sugar you are taking in when eating packaged foods. Why not spend more to reduce the amount of sugar we consume. I would like to see something done to convince people this is a crisis. A crisis much bigger than Climate Change and one we can actually do something about.
One action that could be taken would be to better advise people of those products with high sugar content. On my most recent visit to Chile I noticed the government there had begun such a program. I am not sure what criterion was used but many products on the shelves of grocery stores now have on the front label a warning reading “high in sugar.”
