Is climate change really too hard to understand?

It’s a big subject, all right. And a difficult one to address. But too big to understand it isn’t. Quantum physics is too big to understand. Climate change is simple. I’ll put it in one sentence: There are known heat-trapping gasses, and if we add too much of them to the atmosphere, it will cause large, foreseeable damage to humans and natural environments. That is not too big to understand.A lot of people wonder why we are doing so little to prevent the slow-motion catastrophe of climate change. One theory is that it’s too big a subject to understand.

And a majority of people understand it just fine. They are making the assumption that the political process will work normally and that the government will take the steps necessary to deal with it. Like government did with smog, and with polluted water, and with acid rain, and with ozone depletion. The thing that is hard to understand is how people in positions to do something about it do nothing. Or rather, do everything in their power to stop action.

Read the opinion piece from The Washington Post by Tom Toles - “Is climate change really too hard to understand?”