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Is the world warming, cooling or does it matter?  Most of us will say it matters, a lot, at least in public anyway.  And especially if you are hoping to pay rent or retire one day with a career based around the belief that Amsterdam, New York and Dubai will no longer exist unless we cut greenhouse gases and stop the icecaps from melting. But what has happened now that the earth cooled over the past year? Not to mention former NASA Chief Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson’s claim last year that now that she is “no longer affiliated with any organization nor receive any funding” that she can publicly say that she “remains skeptical.”  Recently the name was changed from ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change’ – what is really going on?  Or does it matter?

This blog, by the way, is not about proving or disproving global warming, global cooling, or that the earth’s warming and cooling cycles over the past 6 ice ages really were the fault of mankind.  This is about the fact that it does not matter what is happening with temperatures but that reducing both greenhouse gas emissions and energy use and creating renewable energy makes complete sense even without climate change political debates.

Republican, democrat, socialist or communist, the following 3 ideas for cutting greenhouse gases without relevance to climate change are hard to argue, but if you can I welcome you to comment below:

1. Releasing black substances that cause cancer into the air in which we breath is not healthy. As if it weren’t obvious enough, the EPA finds greenhouse gases pose a danger to health.  That’s for any skeptics out there that think that ‘the solution to pollution is dilution’ and that puffing on a tailpipe is good for your skin.  No reference to climate change here.
2. It costs money to put these black cancerous gases into the atmosphere. It is our extreme use of carbon based fuels, oil and coal, for transportation and electricity that our money is going to instead of being used for health care, education, infrastructure and your dividend payout.  Who can argue that energy efficient policy and using energy efficient products, therefore, reduces the amount of these black gases that enter the atmosphere while basically paying you to do it.  More legitimate reasons with no reference to climate change.
3. Politically and financially we cannot afford to continue to use finite sources of fossil based fuels, that create greenhouse gases, to power our lives. Some believe it is the left’s fear factors that say the earth is running out of oil to push their agenda.  Even if true, definitely not the whole picture that really matters.  Briefly, China and India’s population and need for energy is skyrocketing while oil discovery is steadily declining (left).  Therefore the most simple supply/demand curve from your first economics class will explain what that means for our future cost of energy.  Renewable energy that does not create pollution nor depend on other nation’s economies and that does not put gases into the air solves more than one problem without the mention of climate change.

Simple enough?  So depending on your argument there is a way to curb climate change for some, put money in the pockets of others and finally if neither of those are your flavor, how about not breathing poisonous gases?  By using common sense and not trying to pinpoint who is right and wrong, we can appease the masses in one way or another by decreasing energy use and turning to renewable sources of energy.  If you are able, what are some of the ways that climate change can be argued for or against without being categorized in another sense such as above?

This post originally appeared on Clean Techies.