“Global warming is controversial, of course, but the controversy is mainly over whether human activity is driving it.” – Michio Kaku a world-famous American Futurist.  Global warming is a topic that a lot of people get hot headed over, even though they may be misinformed.   The popular belief is that humans are at fault, and the earth has never seen these levels of carbon dioxide before.  They don’t realize the Earth’s climate history or analyze why so many government agencies are so eager to blame corporations and factories.  The controversial effects of Global Warming are based on many factors.

Global Warming expenditures cost the government $22.2 billion.  Eighteen different federal departments are set aside to run several programs such as international climate assistance.  $22.2 billion could have gone towards many other problems.  For instance, it cost $12,500 to build a school in Africa; with $22.2 billion, you could build 1,776,000 schools.  The money could also go to vaccinations for children who have no access to them.  Through the GAVI Alliance support, it costs $39 to vaccinate a child completely.  That is roughly 569,231,000 vaccinations or 100,000,000 more than the entire child population of Africa.  Alternatively, the money could even go to building wells for those who don’t have access to clean water.  A well simply costs $7,000, so with $22.2 billion you could build approximately 3,172,000 wells for poor villages in developing countries.  These are merely a few examples of how $22.2 billion could be spent in a more beneficial and productive way to help the Earth.

Global Warming has been used by politics, corporations, and governments to please the environmental friendly crowd.  Politicians support controversial issues such as Global Warming not because they actually believe in them.  Politicians only say they believe in them because they want the largest voter groups within that area.  If a state senator is running for a state that has a large population of environmentalists, he will try his hardest to convince the environmentalists that he will do whatever it takes to stop global-warming.  Corporations do the same thing, except instead of wanting the environmentalist vote; they want their money.  They use a term known as greenwashing which is defined as “a form of spin in which green PR or green marketing is deceptively used to promote the perception that an organization’s products, aims, or policies are environmentally friendly” (Wikipedia 1).  In plainer English that means corporations lie about being environmentally friendly so that more people will buy their products.  Companies have made claims that they use primarily green energy to run their stores and/or factories.  Walmart claimed they used more green energy for their stores when, in reality, they only used 2% of electricity from wind and solar energy.  Surprisingly, people buy what the companies are lying about as “45 percent [of people surveyed] said they believed companies are accurately communicating information about their impact on the environment” (Boston 22). 

Another factor is the persuasion that media has on society.  The world has way too many problems to publish all of them.  So media companies choose only a few of them and repeat them as many times as possible.  Back when I was in 4th grade our class received something called Time for Kids.  For those who don’t what that is, it’s just an off branch of time that is setup more for kids.  A popular topic for articles at the time was global warming.  They put up sad pictures of popular bears as their icy homeland was melting away.  Our class always felt bad for the polar bears and said how we would save them.  Time for Kids told us to recycle everything we could, use as little water as possible, turn off all the unused lights, and subscribe to Time Magazine to stay up to date in how you can save the polar bears.  Now I understand that magazines have to sell copies, but commercializing a “problem” makes it hard to believe that global warming crisis is really a crisis.

The media somehow seem to skip over all the news that they can’t get sponsorships from.  They have all but avoided the fire that is currently devastating Indonesia since July.  This fire has been burning tropical forests and towns for over four months.  The media care more about when polar bears are losing their homes due to “global warming” (even though the polar caps have been growing for the past three years) than when Indonesians are losing their homes and lives due to a raging forest fire.  If the media weren’t so involved in the “global warming crisis,” not as many people care about it as they do now.

Global Warming hasn’t been scientifically proven yet.  A ridiculous amount of money and time has been spent trying to solve a problem that has yet to be scientifically proven.  The claim that 97% of climate scientists agree climate change is man-made and dangerous.  Climate scientist is a very vague term as anyone with a scientific degree can be giving a survey sponsored by the government and reported that he or she is climate scientist.  Naomi Oreskes, a science historian at Harvard said her survey asked if she thought climate change was man-made, but left out the words dangerous.  The survey also was conveniently not given to any scientist who had questioned the reliability of the survey such as John Christy a climate scientist at the University of Alabama and Patrick Michaels a climatologist at Cato Institute.  A proper survey was given to the American Meteorological Society and resulted with only 39.5% of the 1,854 meteorologists responding with climate change being man-made and dangerous, a key word left out of the previous consensus.  Researchers dedicate too much time and money into something that is largely believed to be not dangerous in the scientific community.

Global Warming is a tough topic to have a civil debate about with people who don’t like to consider the possibility of being wrong.  It is a topic that many countries spend too much money on, even though there are better ways to use their funds.  Unfortunately, many people don’t realize that Global Warming is simply used as a political or economic persuasion rather than an actual issue.  Today’s culture lets the media guide what they think are the real problems and cast aside the non-televised ones.  Supporters rush to defend its actuality as if it was proven to be a fact.  Unfortunately, activists fail to realize the massive waste of time and resources that this outdated theory has created.  The next time you get yourself caught in a heated debate about Global Warming, ask yourself, is it a valuable use of your time?