There continues to be a community of people who stubbornly resist jumping on the global warming bandwagon. They're the people who will ruin your Earth Day party. To a lot of us, they seem as out of touch as "the world is flat" believers of another era (obviously before the Thomas Friedman book of the same name).

 

Concerns about man-made climate change continue to gain energy. We take a look at the other side with an article in this issue, about the skepticism over the need to curb our greenhouse gas emissions.

 

We've presented that position in the past as it's come up in the global warming discussion, but increasingly it became a stand that few took seriously. Or so we thought. We continue to get letters from readers complaining about the assumption by environmentalists, politicians, the media, etc., that we have to take dramatic steps to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions.

 

So we pursued the story with good journalistic intentions, to present all sides of an issue no matter how unpopular. But honestly, the story idea gave us some pause internally. We think we've pretty soundly established that what appears on our editorial pages is an objective reflection of the thought and action in the field we cover. Nevertheless, we are aware that merely running such a story would be seen by some as endorsing the position of a bunch of kooks.

 

The fact that I'm writing this column at least in part to explain why we're running this story shows the strong emotion behind the global warming fears. Depending on your point of view, it's either because that position is clearly right -- or we're too insecure about the topic to even consider another side. And that would be dangerous.

 

Earth Day just passed with an amazing amount of mania. Just about everyone is doing something to be green, and they want the world to know it. It officially reached full pop culture status when I heard about the Low Carbon Diet. My favorite was the tongue-in-cheek product idea of environmentally labeled toilet paper that encourages you to use both sides.

 

Treating the environment with respect is a noble cause. But that spirit can't blind us into thinking everything labeled environmental makes sense. And it can't blind us to at least looking at all sides of the issue.

 

Pete Fehrenbach is managing editor of Waste News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.

To subscribe or visit go to:  http://www.wastenews.com