It's Not Your Country

Hey guys, did you know there's a presidential election coming this year?

It's true.  And judging from my Facebook feed, which, as we all know, is the best news source out there these days, a lot of people have A LOT of opinions about who we should vote for.  And they all give really good reasons, citing articles from crazydavesnews.com, and definitelynotbullshit.org, and youcantotallytrustus.com.  And Fox News.  Clearly, people have opinions, and are expressing them.

Sidebar:  Why don't I own this website, yet?

Ok, all kidding aside, I'm gonna start by stating 3 things:

1) I'm about to express an opinion about this election.  If you find you'd rather not know my opinion, I respectfully point out you may be reading the wrong blog.

2) I will not be endorsing any candidate at this time.  Now, yes, I've been courted pretty hard by both the John Kasich and Deez Nuts campaigns, but I'm not ready to commit my endorsement at this time.  My judgement tells me now is the time for unity, not further division.

3) I will not defriend, block, delete, attack, or condemn any of my friends over the nonsense you choose to post and share during this election.  I hope that you will think twice before sharing something from shockingnewsheadline.com and citing it as a reason to love one candidate or openly spew hatred at another candidate, but I'm not gonna react to it.  Now, if you start in with anti-science, anti-intellectual, "vaccines cause autism," stuff, you and I will need to part ways, but I have faith that all of you, my friends, are above at least that sort of silly nonsense.

As I listen to a whole lot of people spouting even more opinions, like how Wall Street is ruining America (it's not), or how socialism is ruining America (wrong again), or ISIS is the biggest threat our country has ever seen (not even close), or we need to secure our border (no, actually, we don't), I'm struck by how many people feel very passionately about what is best for our country, and how those very passionate and strongly held beliefs are at complete loggerheads with someone else's equally strong, passionately held beliefs.  And I wonder how we're ever going to get past this.

And I'm reminded of the famous Ronald Reagan quote, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"  And I think that is the basic question that people ask themselves when considering who, or at least what kind of person, they want in the White House.

And it's the completely wrong question.  It's a question that boils down to, "This is my country, and I'm going to vote for what is best for me."

But it's not your country.  It's not my country.  This country, in fact this entire planet, doesn't belong to us.

We're just temporary inhabitants.

You see, our country belongs to our future.

Or rather, their future.

If we want to make the right choices, we need to change the way we think about this world that we live on.  We have a political system that rarely if ever looks any farther into the future than the next election, but our choices in these elections have real and powerful consequences for the generations that will come after us.  What if we decided to vote for them?

Now, certain things we're bound to have some honest disagreement on, like how to ensure a prosperous economy for the future.  I might believe in free market capitalism within a framework of government regulation, a minimum wage that equates to a living wage and adjusts according to inflation, and free trade agreements that acknowledge our place in a wider global economy.  You, on the other hand, hypothetical reader that disagrees with me, might be wrong.  That's fair, and we should have a chance to debate, to try things out, to adjust if we're wrong.

But in other areas, we don't have to the luxury of being wrong.

From this perspective, it is immoral to vote for any presidential candidate that dismisses climate change as a hoax, a natural phenomenon, or not that important compared to something else (the economy, national security, a good haircut, etc.).

Even my eight-year-old daughter has noticed that this is the warmest winter we've ever had.  There was a hurricane in January.  A relatively isolated equatorial mosquito-borne disease has exploded into regions that have never seen it before, including several cases in the United States.  The science is clear and the reality is terrifying.  I'm somewhat heartened by the Paris Climate Change Accord that was signed back in December, but there are still people running for the highest political office in our land who dismiss this, the single greatest threat to our existence that we currently face.

And considering that even the scientists tell us that in order to mitigate (that is, not even stop, just try to keep it from not being quite so bad) catastrophic climate change, we need to be completely carbon neutral in less than fifty years.  That's (hopefully) inside my own lifetime!

But there are elected officials in our country right now who decry science.  Who think the world's scientists are running some kind of scam.

We need to understand what science is telling us, and we need to do our best to change things.  And we Americans, when we are at our best, can do some pretty amazing stuff.  We need that amazing-ness, now.

You see, we've known about climate change for a long time.  I remember learning about the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide back in the '80s.  Computer models were designed, and predictions were made.  As temperatures continued to rise, they predicted an increase in unusual weather patterns, more intense storms, and a rise in infectious disease spread by tropical insects and other similar disease vectors.  We don't need to wait for science to make predictions about what will happen over the next decade and what to see if the predictions come true.  Because they did, and they did.  We have proof the humans are causing catastrophic climate change.

We need to do something about it.

If we stay on track with the Paris Accord, we can keep the worse-case scenario at bay, and maybe try our hand at terraforming our own planet.  But if the next president pulls the US out of the Paris Accord (as some candidates have said they would), the consequences will be catastrophic.  As in actual, literal catastrophes.  I love metaphors as much as the next guy, but this isn't a metaphor.  Actually catastrophic.

Now, for your convenience, a quick synopsis of where the current field of major party candidates stand on climate change:

Trump:  Global warming was invented by the Chinese.  (He later claimed he was kidding, but still refers to climate change as a "hoax."
Cruz: Climate change doesn't exist.  There has been "no significant warming whatsoever."
Kasich: Climate change is real, is important, but not as important as the economy, so let's not do anything about it.
Clinton: Believes in climate change is a real danger to our species and our planet, supports Obama's efforts to combat climate change and the Paris Accord.
Sanders: Believes climate change is the number one threat that we are currently facing.  He supports strengthening the Obama administrations effort, and supports the Paris Accord, but adds it isn't nearly enough.

And I don't want it to sound like climate chance the only important thing we need to think about (although a direct and immediate threat to the continued existence of the entire human race is kind of a big deal).  We need to think about gun control (we need some), government corruption (we need less), healthcare (need more, and more affordable, for everyone), and immigration (needs to be easier, not harder).

But, I'll be the first to admit, on all of these other issues, there is a chance that I could be wrong.  I don't think I am, because, you know, that's fundamentally what a belief is.  But when it comes to climate change, belief doesn't enter into it.  Science shows us the objective reality of our physical world.  Climate change is real, happening, and the result of human behavior, which we have the power to change.

So please, when you consider who you are going to vote for, don't vote just to lower your taxes.  Don't vote for walls (they never work, anyway).  Don't vote out of fear (people who come from other countries and speak other languages are really very nice).  Don't vote for someone because they are successful in business (successful businessmen have traditionally made lousy presidents).

And don't vote for people who talk about how much better our country used to be.  It's not true.  Our parents and grandparents helped make things better for all of us.  This nation has never been better than it is now.  We are always at our best when our eyes are on our future.  And our children and grandchildren deserve a better country than the one we live in.

We are caretakers of this country, and of this world.  We have something called democracy, because our forefathers rejected the notion that the power of government comes exclusively from God, but rather decided that is comes from the people.  But it's not just the current people, but also all the future people.

So please, whether you live in a state that hasn't yet had their primary, or you're deciding who to vote for in November, please remember this: you're voting for those who can't yet vote for themselves.  You're voting for our kids.

And not just our kids, but everyone's kids.  And it's not just about the physical environment they'll be born into, but the social one as well.  Kids born without opportunities, kids born into poverty, kids subjected to abuse, kids confronted with racism and sexism and ethnic or religious intolerance.  All of them deserve better.  That's what we need to vote for.

Vote for someone else's better tomorrow.

Because it's not really our country, or our world, at all.

Pass it on.