ERRING ON THE SIDE OF CAUTION

Packing parachutes in the pouches used by skydivers is a perfectionist's job. That's because there's no room for error. An improperly packed parachute will not deploy correctly. Lines become tangled with the canopy. The canopy does not expand and fill with air, and when that happens, the result is near-certain death of the skydiver.

If you've ever watched the packing of a parachute, you quickly come to recognize that the process is a tedious one that requires a meticulous attention to detail. If, at any point during the process, the packer feels as if a mistake has been made or a step has been missed or performed out of order, the protocol for packing parachutes requires that the parachute be fully extended and the process started over from the beginning. Error on the side of caution is a parachute packer's number one rule.

Few people would argue with the prudence of the parachute packing protocol. Skydiving is universally recognized as an extremely dangerous endeavor and the likelihood of death from an error in parachute packing is widely understood to be extremely high. In fact, the risk is regarded to be so high that many skydivers insist on either packing their own parachute or personally observing the process as it is being done. With the possibility of death being so great, everybody understands why a skydiver would insist that the utmost caution be taken with packing a parachute. A skydiver's life precariously hangs in the balance and the risk of death is simply too great to ignore.

Why then, can the same not be said when the issue is global warming? Why do vast numbers of people in our society cavalierly choose to ignore the issue? Does our society not recognize that our own lives and the lives of our children hang in the balance? Do we not understand the risk of death we face? Is it that easy or convenient to ignore?

Climate change is already occurring. The polar icecaps and glaciers around the globe are melting. Droughts in arid regions have worsened. Rains in traditional rainy regions have intensified. Areas where flooding frequently occurs have expanded. Tornadoes and hurricanes are developing in much greater number than ever before in recorded history. The average temperature of our atmosphere has climbed.

Scientists the world over have been warning us of the cataclysmic dangers we face if we continue to ignore the build-up of hydrocarbon emissions in our atmosphere, and yet, our nation continues to stick its head in the sand, pretending that a problem doesn't exist. Some, who do acknowledge the problem, say that the problem cannot be solved. Others say that the solution requires too high a price. There are even people who believe they can survive whatever calamity Mother Nature throws at them and are willing to take the risk of doing nothing.

If you ask the average person on the street whether they would skydive from an airplane flying 5000 feet above the ground, most folks would say no and justify their answer by saying that the risk of death was too high to justify undertaking such activity. You'd figure that those same people would not want to risk death by ignoring the consequences of global warming, but you'd be wrong. Things look different on the ground. It's only when people get to 5000 feet, when they realize that all that's standing between them and death is a properly packaged thin string that people start to appreciate the concept of erring on the side of caution.

Unfortunately, by then it's impossible to do anything to correct the situation.