As the Lode’s News Editor, I probably shouldn’t admit that I follow Now This on social media but I do. If you’re not familiar with Now This, it’s a super liberal “news” source that displays stories in short videos. It’s not good as a news source in and of itself, but I like that it brings things to my attention so that I can find real information on the issue.
I bring this up because about a week ago I saw a Now Thia story about a study that found that sandwiches contribute to climate change. The study — which assumed that all sandwiches are store-bought and contain meat — reportedly found that the packaging, transportation and ingredients in sandwiches contributes to global warming. This is both ridiculous and terrifying.
Before you stop reading, know that I don’t think it’s terrifying because I believe that sandwiches cause climate change, I think it’s terrifying because that’s a ridiculous thing to say.
I believe that climate change is happening, that humans are causing it and that we should do something about it. This is a belief that many people disagree with, and I see that as a problem. It’s very hard to get these people to listen to reason and scientific evidence, and they aren’t going to start paying attention if we have people telling them that sandwiches are up there with pollution on the list of things destroying the planet. Furthermore, it threatens to alienate people like me by making climate change feel like such a ubiquitous thing that we might as well ignore.
A similar case is that of cancer. I used to be really afraid of cancer because studies seemed to show that it was caused by smoking and drinking and certain plastics. Then studies showed that it was caused by certain foods or beverages, or certain foods and beverages in combination, or by spending too much time outside. It eventually got to the point where so many articles were saying that so many things cause cancer that I basically stopped caring and decided ‘Maybe I’ll get cancer, maybe I won’t. I can’t stop living my life in fear of dying.’ I should be afraid of cancer. Everyone should be afraid of cancer but when something is everywhere people just kind of tune it out because avoiding it or doing something about it seems so hopeless or even unnecessary. The same thing is happening with climate change, and honestly a whole lot of other things.
This isn’t only a lesson not to trust everything that you hear at face value and to wait and see what facts are left behind when the research settles, I think it’s a lesson in how we talk about the things that matter to us. If something is happening that shouldn’t and people are getting hurt we need to bring it to the public’s attention but if we make everything about that thing and that thing about everything, eventually it just becomes noise. People don’t listen to noise, they just ignore it because it’s everywhere.
