Scary stuff November 2, 2007

Well, I can definitely say that school has officially picked up momentum. All six (six!) of my classes are keeping my on my toes. More than that, I’m definitely struggling in my Finance class, my Accounting class (though this one is definitely easier than the last one!), and my Quantitative Models class–in short, all of my numbers based classes. My other three classes, Geopolitics, Organizational Behavior, and Economics, are a total pleasure–of course.  But it’s Friday afternoon, and my classes finished at 12:30, and I’m still here, why?, because there’s a tutorial session for Accounting today that I really can’t afford to miss.

However, none of that is what scared me today. And no, it’s not the pictures from the Halloween party the other night that have scared me, either. (Though I will post those as soon as I can–due to a glitch with the server at school, I won’t be able to upload them until I’m at the Arc Cafe again, which is where I go on the weekend to use the interwebs.) No, what scared me to death today was my Geopolitics discussion. We read this (admittedly, alarmist and perhaps somewhat exaggerated) article about global warming–a concept which, by itself, is scary enough. But in a room of 20 people, it became quickly apparent that there was no kind of consensus either about the cause of global warming or even its mere existence, let alone any kind of agreement about what we should collectively do about it. And I think to myself, man, we’re in a world of trouble if a room of 20 people from my generation, the next generation of leaders in the world, who are all intelligent, educated, and mostly from middle to upper class families in the first world, can’t come to a consensus, what’s going to happen to our planet in the coming years? (I definitely made the whole room laugh when I went on my usual tirade about why I hate Hummers–man they make me angry, because to me, they’re an indicator of all of the irresponsibility, self indulgence, and outright excess that the people of our fine, fine nation are so addicted to.) I have actually heard people say, in seriousness, “the myth of global warning,” and “we’re in a warming cycle,” and there’s one guy in my class who’s convinced that sun spots are what’s causing global climate change. But even if we can debate about global warming and its causes, it remains painfully clear that we, as a planet, are running out of sustainable, renewable resources, and the world is changing because of it. And still, STILL, there is no consensus about possible solutions. I, of course, don’t have one either, but I think that, as GI Joe would say, “knowing is half the battle,” and as painful as these truths are, I’d way rather know about them, and acknowledge them to be true, than debate in class about whether carbon emissions and ethanol gas in the atmosphere are what’s creating the greenhouse effect.  So it seems to me like we have, as a global community, a big, big battle to fight. And I wish I had more faith in global leadership to begin to make those changes.

Anyway, ranting aside, if you’re interested in some more information about climate change and resource sustainability, here are some good sites:

www.myfootprint.org (the quiz is pretty interesting)

http://www.pthbb.org/natural/footprint/ (resource usage–whoa, US…)

I’ll post Halloween pictures soon, promise!!!