It has been a rough few months. The Trump administration cannot be accused of being uneventful. I initially wrote this post as a rant in January when, after only a week in office, the Trump administration was imposing a freeze on EPA grants, made 'alternative facts' a daily concern and seemed to have offended everyone in science, regardless of their political affiliation. Being a 5th year graduate student (BUSY BUSY BUSY), trying to still do science so I can get a job in science even though there's a war on science, it's been tough to find the time to finish many posts (I have 6 started... so they'll get there eventually). For now, here's my rant... |
So, regardless of these terms and how their usage effects the public, the environment still undergoes change and, despite personal political beliefs, we, as a species on this planet, have a responsibility of helping the environment and not making conditions worse.
Compromise must be made between sides to make something abstract more tangible. My recommendation, take those terms out of it and focus on actual, tangible issues.
My lion example (sorry for all the commas but try to follow me): Climate change isn't reducing the home range of the African lion, anthropogenic factors (things that are a result of human activity), such as humans coming into lion habitat, which, in turn, changes the landscape, do. A focus on alleviating human-wildlife conflict, teaching carnivore-friendly land use, and the creation of corridors to preserve passageways for movement of species across people dominated areas, for example, will better serve the lion population than trying to "stop climate change." It's something people can more readily relate to and inevitably leads to that bigger picture that "climate change" is trying to encompass but is too abstract for many to understand. It's the same goal just a refocus of the issue. And, I think, the lion conservation community is doing this well.