Why does Global Warming get positioned as an "environmental" issue?

Question

The issue is caused by industry and personal choices.
The effects may have major implications for the economy, health care, immigration, disaster relief, and the availability of water, food, and energy.
Deciding how to respond involves decisions on personal and societal mores and values.
The solutions must encompass industrial policy, transportation policy, regional planning, energy policy, international relations and collaboration, and so much more.

Since it's such an all-encompassing scenario, starts with people and ends with effects on people, and since most of the human scope of the effects are not studied or addressed in the course of environmental science, why does it get tucked away as an "environmental" issue? Most of us see the "environment" as being something outside of "us." Sure, the environment will change along the way, but isn't the issue far broader and greater, and ultimately more about our choices, and the effects those will have on us?

My guess is that it's a calculated political move to marginalize support for responses to global warming. Environmentalists embrace it, while everyone else is glad it's off their plate. Environmentalists can lead the charge tadn the rest of us can wait to see how it turns out. Isn't that why after 20 years none of the other disciplines is responding (architecture, regional planning, etc)? It's not their problem.

This is what prompted me to ask the question:

"Disaster preparedness is not an environmental problem." It is a hallmark of environmental rationality to believe that we environmentalists search for "root causes" not "symptoms."

The Death of Environmentalism
Global warming politics in a post-environmental world
http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/01/13/doe-reprint/

Maybe we're all missing the point by arguing about the causes instead of focusing on the responses?

Answer 1

And what if you're wrong? Then you're just wasting time and resources.

How do you know it isn't going to be colder 5 years from now?

Answer 2

Yes, I believe it is much more than just an environmental issue, I agree with you. I usually vote in presidential elections for the person with the best ideas about the environment, and this next time will be no different. Finally people are starting to recognize how important it is, though, so politicians are starting to focus on it more and more.

Answer 3

Primarily because people in general do not understand enough about the theory to know the difference from GHG and pollution. And secondly, because the global warming zealots know that if they can get carbon dioxide accepted as a pollutant by governments, the subject will fall into the environmental category within in most governments which demands swifter action.

Answer 4

Because it is an Environmental phenomena that affects the Environment And we are a component of that
that Global warming has become a political social issue is only natural ,

There are bound to be elements
who will distort or exaggerate truths ,as well as hiding others .for political ,economic or even religious reasons
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We are not outside the Environment ,
that is the whole point .we are interrelated
like every other living entity
Any thing happening to the Environment affects us in the end.

Everything you mention ,like food and that means soil and climate,potable water and Air are Environmental issues.

Economy and Ecology walk hand in hand
Economy depends on a healthy Environment
History has proved that
all renaissance periods of civilizations coincided with their soil and climatic conditions
the moment the soil was gone or the water the civilizations ceased ,apart from Wars but these always halted agriculture so were also indirectly an Environmental issues.

Now Global warming may raise the price of beer in the future ,because of potable water shortage
and food prices may rise because the third world countries got lots of problems due to Global Warming.
on e degree rise in temperature means 10% crop loss-

In Chiapas ,and Tabasco in Mexico .more then a million people became homeless overnight with water coming up to their roofs ,because of rains from super evaporation from the forests,this had never happened before.
Millions of animals died

In India 3000 people died because of super storms .
Right now the average death toll annually is 150.000 due to Global warming
a few years ago a whole bunch in France as well.

these figures are already out of date and are expected to double soon.

In Northern China millions of people are running for their lives because regular dust storms so far have buried 900 villages under the sand
and the whole of northern China is turning into a dessert.

The Sahara is growing by 7 kilometers a year all around the edges ,like a slow burning fire shriveling up their neighbors

In the Kalahari huge rivers have dried up and thousand of species are gone due to their habitats disappearing

the biggest changes are invisible at micro biotic levels species are becoming extinct ,others are multiplying ,this affects the insect populations that follow ,and changes in that affect all that follows in the food chains ,All life is interrelated of both flora and fauna,

And we as being on the top of the food chain are always the last to know

Human pollutions and destructive Environmental behavior is just adding to it
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AnjGjC8rP4bVRzh9r3twRHHsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20070618163201AAyuI69

Answer 5

Thing is........
Its not an issue at all.
When will people start undertsanding that WE CANT STOP IT !!!!!!
It is the natural progression of the life of this planet.
The planet gets warmer........ The planet cools .........
ITS BEEN DOING THIS FOR BILLIONS OF YEARS !!!!!!!
Take my word for it
Just because Al " carbon footprint trading " Gore says its true
That doesnt make it true.

Edit
Today (12/13/07) Gore blamed the USA for global warming.
Thyere having some sort of "summit" in Bali to try and stop global warming......... lmfao
Said if we didnt do anything to stop it we should be punished.
What a piece of garbage that guy is.
Maybe if he stopped flapping his lips the temperature would go down few degrees.

Answer 6

If anything screamed national security issue, this does.

It gets pegged in various ways by those who would tend to view it as a threat to laziness, scientists or whomever say - hey something is going on with the _______, and an instant "army" of anyone responsible for paying to respond to that change, will be formed to fight that perception.

When I was a kid, I was always confused at how Superman's whole planet could get screwed when the situation seemed obvious, after seeing some of the political soothsaying coming out of the "anti" global warming camp, I'm not confused anymore, welcome to Krypton.

We as a species or perhaps just a people (in the US), have a serious inability to accept being told anything as a limit to our desires, particularly those in the "me" generation.

http://books.google.com/books?id=2Cr5rP8jOnsC&pg=PA218&lpg=PA218&dq=frog+pot+psychology&source=web&ots=ehL6eDBB1T&sig=HIawH0d6shLIrEwKvUjAxR0Vvtk

Our inability to even acknowledge the problems presented is a problem in itself, we have this failure perhaps as a flaw of our species in many ways, as similar problems regarding economics/jobs,oil,water,food dependency are other related constraints to our way of life.

What the largely more poorly educated people don't or don't want to understand is that our current generation (however old you are), is going to run up against the physical limits of what our planet can sustain.

Food production peaked in 1998 and has been declining, 2008 will mark the first year we run an actual shortage for amount of food produced in nearly 50 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drought#See_also
http://www.earthfuture.com/earth/wherewillourfood.asp

Oil production probably peaked in 2005, with exponentially increasing use we may well be in the position that oil becomes prohibitively expensive within the next 10-15 years.

http://www.theoildrum.com/

Water shortages - climate change, bad land use and drought have combined - in many areas to produce long-term economically significant droughts, which are only likely to increase since we are not always correcting for the bad behaviors which got us there in the first place.

http://whyfiles.org/131fresh_water/2.html

In the Midwest, west and more recently the southeast US, climate change and drought are no longer such strange liberal concepts, they are economically tragic realities that folks are having to deal with.

The US is also completely unaware and frankly could probably not be made to care about the hellish economic and ecological conditions WE as a species have created, in places like Georgia (former USSR) and many parts of India and China which are not just becoming "unsustainable" but are quickly becoming "uninhabitable" which is the "next" step up the ladder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kishon_River
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/ADB_Approves_Loan_To_Clean_Up_Most_Polluted_River_In_China.html
http://www.coxwashington.com/reporters/content/reporters/stories/2005/11/29/BC_CHINA_ACCIDENTS29_COX.html
http://www.scidev.net/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=readNews&itemid=2070&language=1
http://www.indiawaterportal.org/data/datastats/
http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/11/02/atlanta_drought/index.html

I suspect after we starting seeing other nations (such as Pakistan or India or China) feel compelled to "act unilaterally" to spread/sustain "their way of life" we will be in for a cold-hard reality check, especially if they "act unilaterally" in a way which adversely affects our "interests".

http://www.amazon.com/Resource-Wars-Landscape-Conflict-Introduction/dp/0805055762

Answer 7

Global warming itself is a scientific and environmental issue.

You're talking about what we're going to do about global warming. Once the science has been established and accepted, what we do about it becomes a political issue.

Global warming is also discussed frequently in the Politics section, but unfortunately most people there are completely ignorant of the science of the issue.

Answer 8

Because it is. It's carbon pollution.

And what if you're wrong?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDsIFspVzfI

Answer 9

because it is effecting the environment!

Answer 10

I think it should be in the politcal section becasue global warming is strictly a politcal issue.