People talk about the weather all the time. For some reason we seem unable to avoid having at least one conversation per day about the weather—the word we use to describe our environment. Perhaps it is because we are humans, and as such are an integral part of the world in which we live. Not to sound like a hippie, but we are all a part of Mother Earth.

People forget a lot of things, and remember a lot of completely unnecessary things, like every detail of Anna Nicole Smith’s life. Remember Hurricane Katrina? Well, stuff in New Orleans is still pretty bad. Apparently it’s the murder capital of the world. I don’t know, I wasn’t there, I just heard it on the news. On top of all those nice prizes, the mother load just landed in the New Orleans area—a twister right before Valentine’s Day. Now, apparently this is not front page material. CNN.com only mentions the situation when you click on the weather section.

One thing that I’ve been hearing a lot about on the news is the melting of the polar ice caps. This information makes me worried. What will the big fuzzy polar bears and cute little penguins do when their frozen homes are all melted? Then I thought, perhaps Coca-Cola can pay for their living expenses. That’s the only way the recurring Christmas commercials could be considered realistic, anyway. Once the polar ice caps are melted, the polar bears and penguins will have to live together in neighboring tanks, sharing soda-pop in a zoo owned by Coca-Cola. Sounds fair to me, considering all the bottles they’ve helped sell. Hopefully everyone recycled those bottles, if we really do love polar bears and penguins so much.

Global warming, or the euphemistic “climate change,” has been a hot topic in politics lately, and that probably explains why it’s on the news so much—or perhaps it’s the other way around. The problem is people have become so apathetic that they will wait for their politicians to do something about climate change when they should really be barking up the corporate ladder, as well as taking their own advice. There is solid evidence to indicate that humans are in fact the main cause of global warming. Not the long existing humans, as a harmless and self-sustaining species, but humanity post-Industrial Revolution.

The American Geophysical Union, an organization made up of over 41,000 scientists from 130 countries, all of them specializing in a plethora of fields directly involving Earth-related sciences, released a statement in 2003, which is only now reaching the peak of its coverage in the media, called “Human Impacts on Climate.” In this statement the AGU says, “Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have increased since the mid-1700s through fossil fuel burning and changes in land use, with more than 80 percent of this increase occurring since 1900.”

A lot of people seem to be sneering in response to this, as if to say, “Who the hell are these guys to be telling me what to think? They’re just a bunch of dirty liberals.” Well, no…they’re all real live scientists from 130 different countries. They know what they’re talking about. They are not out to kill capitalism, and they are not all from Communist or socialist backgrounds (not that there’s anything wrong with that—I love Canada). Their goal is, “improving the communication of scientific information to governments and private organizations so that their decisions on climate issues will be based on the best science.” Well, since this was released in 2003, obviously we have been doing a lot to make informed decisions and improve our environment. Look at all these people we elected to run our government. They all claim to care about the environment, but what have they really done? For the last six years, President Bush has stated that he does not consider carbon dioxide an air pollutant.

This month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released their Fourth Assessment Report, a summary for policymakers. In this document, they reaffirm that humans are indeed the primary cause of climate change, coming to this determination by analyzing ice cores that provide information about thousands of years of environmental activity. In contrast to Bush’s dismissal of carbon dioxide’s role in climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel asserts, “Carbon dioxide is the most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas.” According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. is the leading producer of carbon dioxide. The Intergovernmental Panel also warns that “Anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would continue for centuries…even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized.” It sounds like we’re all going to be underwater soon.

So, humans have caused this phenomenon called Global Warming. The ice caps are melting, officially making polar bears an endangered species. Polar bears are mating with animals further south, in a fight, flight, or fuck instinctive reaction to the destruction of their natural home. That’s not the really weird part though—the polar bears are mating with different species of bears. Ew…

Since politicians are usually the last people to look to when making an informed decision, I will step forward to suggest the next best step we can take in preparing for the inevitable. In Biblical times, Noah built a huge ark for when the flood came to wash all the sinning animals off the face of the Earth. Well, instead of trying to buy loft apartments in swanky neighborhoods, we should focus on the best way of preparing for our future; everyone, get a boat.

The coast, as we know it, will all be underwater in the near future. Look around you, and look at the information that is so readily available. If we continue to wait for our politicians to make a decision to change things we will all drown, or be forced to mate with other species in a last-ditch attempt at survival. When you look at the road, littered with fast food containers, the factories spewing out poison, and the masses driving passenger-less gas-guzzling monstrosities, you should come to the same realization that I did. We all need to make some big, sturdy sailboats, and start building our houses on poles.

Go to EPA.gov to find out what you can do to reduce climate change.