Me, My Dad, and the Battle Against Ridiculous Conservative Radio Stations

My father loves nature. He loves everything about the trees, the grass, and generally being outdoors. He also loves saving money. This includes turning off lights, using less water, less unnecessary heat and air conditioning, and simply does not like to waste. Yet, when he listens to obnoxious conservative radio stations (he's a moderate conservative stuck in a large family of ultra liberals)that still try to argue that there is little realistic action humans can do to fight global warming, my buttons get pushed. Although normally I prefer not to talk about Al Gore and global warming with my father, when his radio station started bashing Gore for all of the money that he is making from these campaigns, I thought it would be a good opportunity to go over the course's Thanksgiving homework. And so I began.

"Dad, you know this is crap, right?" -me

"Did you know that a whole group of local meteorologists just came out saying that global warming is not occuring? That it is just natural cycles of changes in weather patterns?" -Dad

"Dad, you're joking. I know you know that's a load of bull" -me

"I'm not saying anything one way or another. I'm just telling you the facts. The facts are that a whole group of local, well known meteorologists came out saying that global warming is not occurring. I just thought it was interesting, that's all.

"Wow..... (I go on long schpeil about End of the Wild statistics and current state of environment)

Fast forward to Politics:

"China owns us, you know. And that is not good for any of us. Including the environment. I don't know what you think is going to happen under Obama, but the reality is that the economy is in the toilet and government can't afford to get into more debt with all of these new green projects. --he said something about Hoover and the Great Depression, but I zoned out----

"(I go into schpiel about green collar jobs and how Obama isn't doing enough. Environment as way to reboost and redesign economic structures. We can fix this, it's easy--McDunough comes out---now is the time to demand big changes......

"Cheryl, I hope you're right, I really do. But it just doesn't seem realistic at this time. I see what you're saying, but the economic benefit will not show up until the longterm, at which time our debt would grow considerably.....9more on CHina and the economy and such.

At least I made some progress with my dad. He gets what I'm saying, sees my arguments, but I think it is too far-fetched for him to think that all of this is realistic, although when I told him that I would do much more than Obama if I had the opportunity, he seemed pretty interested. Overall good conversation, but not worth having again for at least a few years.