Focus the Nation...and ProU

Over a thousand institutions across the country (my own college included) have been participating in Focus the Nation today. Panel discussions, screenings of "The 2% Solution," and lectures aimed at educating the public about the truths and myths surrounding climate change have, I hope, been successful. This is a very important issue for me, especially after I took a class last year on environmental physics and actually began to understand the science of it. The IPCC report came out at the same time, and it was exciting/frightening to have a panel of thousands of scientists confirm that global warming is here and that the amount of climate change that has happened already cannot be mathematically accounted for by normal warming cycles. The IPCC took what people were calling Al Gore's "junk science" and legitimized his claims, which is something I don't think many people realize. Climate change policy around the world is based on the findings of this report, a consensus document compiled by about five thousand scientists over several years; governments don't make laws based on An Inconvenient Truth.

I'm not going to get into the science of global warming, because others have done it much better than I can and I don't think facts are going to convince anybody not ready to believe that climate change exists. What I want to talk about, actually, is how volatile the discussions have become on ProgressiveU. If someone talks about climate change, a naysayer will tear them down--and the initial writer will lash out in return because he or she does not have a fact-based argument. It's the same for plenty of other issues that get discussed here. What should be a forum for progressive discussion and positive change has become a lot of partisan bickering and people posting pointless blogs in futile hopes of winning a scholarship.

So whether it's climate change, the war, Darfur, nuclear power, sustainability, Communism, civil rights, gay marriage, affirmative action, politics, or any other topic, I beg the fellow users of ProgressiveU to discuss instead of fight. Be civil to one another. Explore the other side. Agree to disagree, or unite to bring about change. The Ghandi quote, "Be the change you want to see in the world" is so often quoted as to seem a bit cliche, but maybe we should remember it instead of starting cat fights about who is right.