The Sign of Environmental Changes?

Okay, I live in a state that can get very cold in the winter. These last few winters, it's actually been fairly mediocre. I remember, in high school, the governor canceled all classes for public schools because it was already -20 degrees F outside, and the wind chill was -30 on top of that. (My older brother was in college at the time, though, so he still had to head out in the cold.)

Then we had El Niño and La Niña, and our winters became very sloppy. They didn't get very cold, we didn't get a lot of snow - maybe a dusting around the holiday season. We'd get a bit more in January and February, but I think we topped out (where I am) at about 4 inches on average. And I remember thinking over the years in college, "how long is this West Coast weather trend going to affect us for?"

Well, apparently it's not anymore. This past Christmas, it snowed enough - a heavy, wet snow (great for snowballs) - to give us nearly two feet of snow over the course of one weekend. Now, shoveling this wasn't a lot of fun, but it was a snowfall like the ones I remember us having when I was a kid. This was combined with some rain at the same time, which did not make the shoveling any fun, as it made an ice cap on top of the snow, and driving was a mess. Walking wasn't much fun either, and we had trouble getting up our alley's driveway, since we have hills on both entrances to it. However, we did get snow, and watching it fall was awesome.

This was followed by a few weeks of very cold weather, during which the lumps of snow that the plows wound up leaving on the roads froze solid so the plows could no longer get them up. Roads are kinds bumpy, but so long as you don't go too fast, this can be overcome. Which is actually fine, as you really don't want to drive too quickly on what might be snow over black ice anyway.

But now we've had the environmental talks, and we actually had customers coming into the store to argue about the environment as well as shop. Apparently, a lot of people are thinking, "The weather is cold again - see, we knew all this "Global Warming" crap was a load of bull! We've wasted money worrying about nothing, and they're over there wasting their time and our money talking about something that's just a non-issue!" And blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.

And I have to think, Wait a minute - I don't think this is as much of a non-issue that you're making it out to be.

The thing is, we've had hybrid cars since, what, 1997? Even if they were only in Japan at the time, they were there. Granted, Toyota Prius was the only one at the time, but that model all by itself have sold nearly 1.5 million units worldwide. That's for one model of car. There's that many cars, minimum, that are not releasing as many toxins into the air we breath. Since then, we've added Honda, Ford, Nissan, Saturn, Dodge, Lexus and Chevrolet brands onto the market, also replacing cars that had much higher toxic emissions.

From that time, we have also had motorcycles, buses, military trucks, some mining machines, trains, and some aquatic vehicles go to hybrid, at the very least. That's going to account for a lot of emissions taken out of the air, world wide. Which is going to contribute to the lessening of CO² in the atmosphere, and steer the planet's atmosphere a bit more closely to where it was before we started all of these industrial shenanigans.

Does this mean, because we now have colder weather, that all the environmental talks are unnecessary? No. It means we're taking steps in the right direction, and reducing things enough that they might even get back to what could be considered "normal."