Ritically evaluate

Submit a 1000 words paper on the topic Ritically evaluate the following statement: The problem of global warming is not a good example of Tragedy of the Commons. Yet, few people participate in this endeavor, and to most humans, even those who do participate, it comes as no surprise. Pretty much everyone on the planet contributes to global warming, but not everyone has the same size of contribution. A farmer in African who lives in a hut without running water or electricity is not contributing in the same way as a Christmas-loving woman in Pomona with a 5500 square foot home on which she strings a million Christmas lights throughout the months of November, December and January. Both are contributing but definitely the excessive display of lights uses up more electricity and thereby indirectly contributes to the drain of natural resources and pollution of the ozone than does the poor farmer in Africa with a few cows whose methane laden wastes also directly diminish the ozone. The woman in Pomona most likely also consumes meat and dairy products which equal the poor African farmer’s small contribution to global warming. The farmer may not even be aware that there is such a thing as global warming, but the Pomona woman knows. She either does not care or figures many other people are conserving energy and checking their carbon footprints. Their efforts, she reasons, compensate for her lack of effort. That is the tragedy because humans are normally selfish and naturally pass the buck on things that are time-consuming, confusing, or stressful. It takes time to separate one’s garbage. It takes money to buy an environmentally friendly car or to attach solar panels to one’s roof. It is much easier to let others do it and pretend to be on board. In fact, stopping global warming has become such a trendy thing, some people (the few who can afford it) purchase environmentally friendly products just to be hip. For instance, people have solar panels installed on the shady side of their house because it is more aesthetic there than on the sunny side. Their motivation is really only to show other people that they contribute even if their contribution is meaningless. Those efforts are pretty extreme, but lesser similarly hypocritical efforts such as buying certain earth friendly products because they are the “in” thing make a difference even if the motivation for doing so is skewed. The fact that people find the topic of global warming too overwhelming, too boring, and too frightening may explain why it took several decades for environmentalists to direct enough attention to the impending doom. Prior to Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, only a few tree huggers living in the back woods of Oregon cared that coal mining was destroying the environment in West Virginia. What do the tree huggers care asked the coal miners? It is West Virginian’s livelihood and their damaged environment, but, of course, that is not true. Other people are affected by the damage not only to the soil and water done by the coal mining, but also to the ozone. The poor African farmer is affected by it, the woman in Pomona maybe even more so judging by the stagnant cloud of smog that frequently sits over a good portion of Southern California. The ozone over the farmer’s head is diminishing just as quickly as the ozone over a West Virginia coal miner’s head.