[JMintzer]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

"Climate change" is not synonymous with "global warming" or "man-made CO2." It's like asking if the reason flowers grow in flower beds is because people buy fertilizer.

If we hadn't polluted the air. If we hadn't cut down forests. If we hadn't used the land for toxic waste. If we hadn't drilled thousands of miles worth of holes in the planet. If we hadn't replaced pristine natural reserves with skyscrapers and parking lots and commercial areas. If we hadn't dumped garbage in our water sources...

then the climate change would have still happened, but not as quickly. Glaciers melt. That's a natural part of climate change. But they're melting quicker now, than they have ever in the current incarnation of the existence of humans as homo sapien sapien.

The Age of Agriculture created pockets of needy soil that hadn't previously existed, which required water, which meant depleting local water sources, which meant needing to create chemical methods of growing to preserve water, which then attracted more pests, which needed more pesticide, which polluted the air, water, and land, which killed animals, which caused harm to the ecosystem and food chain, which led to dead critters, which led to decay, which composts and becomes heated, which seeps into water sources, which erodes the oceans, and so on and so forth.

The Bronze Age contributed its own death punch to the planet. Didn't kill it, but gave it a shake. The Iron Age did as well.

Throughout human history, we have continued to leech from the planet that sustains us, use it up, and burn it, pollute it, evaporate it, or otherwise consume it. Climate change is NOT the result of that, but it is AFFECTED by that.

You don't have to like it. And we can't stop it. Even if we were to slow it down /now/ we would likely not see the results of that slow-down in our lifetime, or our grandchildren's lifetimes.

If only Joni Mitchell had written "Big Yellow Taxi" a hundred years earlier...