Although the problem has been adressed in many ways, it has developed two different sides, those who believe global warming is an issue, and those who believe it's not (nothing new here), yet the interesting factor to these sides is that of the involvement of the media as to promoting global warming like an issue to be adressed inmediatly. Since global warming is a situation that has been all over people's mind as long as I can remember, it only came to a violent media explotion when former vicepresident of the United States and once a candidate for president, Al Gore presented his now polemical documentary “An Inconvinient Truth”, through this all the attention went on to the global warming and climate change issues, creating a whole lot of believers, and consecuently a whole lot of sceptics.
This sudden interest on the climate fueled a massive media display, from concerts (like those of Live 8, a reformed Live AID), and a bunch of publications saying how this world is coming to an end. Now, given the actual nature of media itself, it will imediatly target the hot topic for people to see, and climate change is indeed a very hot topic. Yet this may seem for some people like unfair and tricky, since they have become aware that the media and journalists have indeed an agenda of their own, pinpointing only what is to be published and excluding the rest of the given “reality” or real issue; that is ofcourse nothing new, but the point is that those actions, good or bad that is not relevant to this article, have turned a lot of people into a more sceptic state regarding the human treath for it's own evironment.
Oddly enough I found the most sceptical opinions diverted into the web forums of newspapers in Europe, were some of the authors regarded the climate change as mainly, an exageration from the media. And the main arguments for this statement was that during previous decades have the climate issue been adressed in different situations, as for example, in the 70's scientists talked about a glaciar era to be entered in the year 2000 as for the massive amount of polution, so were also in other years, I remember in the 90's was the hole in the atmosphere a big concern among people, yet those ideas were in a way “forgoten” giving way to new ones, but all of them had something in common, they held the idea of the human being been so capable of transforming its evironment and eventually destroy it.
I understand the concern among the general population as they feel they are being lied to their faces, but have not things changed since the 70's?
On the other hand it is true that the mass media does have a tendency of fulfilling it's own agenda, and that is to make money, and this would give way to different ways to address the same issue, this being resulted in the believe or disbelieve of it's audience, who, as aware as they may seem are not entirely free from its grap, it is a fact that the mayority of people still truly believe everything that is portrayed in the media, and this apparent massive alientation may not be the result of a fight against hegemonism, but the result of another source of information itself. As I said, climate change is a polemical issue, that has had strong reactions among the scientific comunity aswell, even scientists seem to be at a crossroad regarding global warming.
Yet from my point of view, there is a mayor difference in the climate and some may say it is caused due to a natural reaction of our planet itself, as it has been through a lot of climate changes, ice ages and so. But have these changes occured in such a short period of time? We must be aware of the influence we do have in our planet, the human being has successfully managed to eliminate entire species, something that would take natural selection millions of years. Yet we seem to neglect the fact that we are capable to changing our own enviorment. From my point of view climate change, and those issues regarding our own hability for destruction, are not being portrayed enough or correctly in the media, the fact that we still believe that the way we live our lifes have no real impact in our world is truly mistaken, and this may not only regard climate, but also social and political issues.
I guess that the bottom line is that no matter what we believe is to be true regarding climate change, it wouldn't hurt us to try and make this a better place for our children and for ourselves by reducing our energy consumption and gas emitions, who knows maybe there's the answer to a healthy world.
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