People sometimes find me grumpy, annoyed (and annoying), and even occasionally what they might consider as unfriendly. Yet I am none of those. Instead, I am tired of continually seeing people wasting time on trivial, meaningless, useless, irrelevant, nonsensical, nitpicking, frivolous, inconsequential, petty, trifling, paltry, hairsplitting (and frequently repetitive) topics. I am further exhausted from the seemingly never-ending duplicitous speech we hear from politicians. Can we not resolve an issue and then move on? Is silence so painful to our ears that we must rush in to fill it with babble? Can I possibly be alone in swimming through this river of drivel? Every day, it seems I drown there and am reborn the next day to repeat it.

Don’t get me wrong; I am not bothered by other people continuing to repeat their beliefs endlessly, but please—not to me. For example, the TV news has attacked my brain for the past year, questioning whether Trump would beat Biden, whether Trump would be in prison, whether Biden would run again, whether Hunter Biden would be prosecuted, whether global warming is irreversible, whether electric cars are a good idea, whether the electric grid will support us, whether windmills are environmentally-friendly, whether the southern border needs a wall, and so much more.

Do these questions fill your brain? Are they important to you? If so, then how are you resolving them? See, that’s my issue; many topics come our way each day, but many are beyond our ability to resolve, so we are best served by focusing on those that are within our reach, or slightly beyond. You have my admiration if you took action on resolving a major concern of yours–but most issues we worry about are beyond our ability to solve. So, does worrying help? The best we can do for those issues is to plan for a negative outcome—and that should be our plan. Am I just being a Pollyanna? Not. Wishing solves nothing. Major issues are resolved with time and incremental adjustment, some of which are adjustments to our very perception itself.

Remember in 2016, when many people stated they would leave the country if Trump was elected? Yet, when he was elected, they decided to stay. Trump didn’t change: they did. They changed their perception of what it was they were afraid of. We worry about global warming, all the while continuing to eat meat regularly, drive cars, and take airline flights. We rationalize, don’t we? It is not the act of solving problems that attracts us. No, it is the pleasure of talking about them. Don’t give us solutions. That annoys us. Let us worry, complain, and do nothing.

The good news is that some concerns are being resolved. Despite our belief that all people are stupid, save us, there are people at work to resolve the nasty fears we share. Electric cars? The bloom is off that rose, and people in authority are now seeing that our electricity network is not ready yet, and the energy to fuel all those anticipated electric cars isn’t sustainable yet.

Global warming, though, is what one might call the elephant in the room. This is an enormous issue, and we are all clueless about what to do. The solutions that we see are all quick fixes that are dependent on having pollution-free electricity: eliminate gas stoves for electric ones, eliminate gas-powered cars for electric ones, eliminate gas-powered furnaces for electric ones, and eliminate gas-powered lawnmowers for electric ones. It all sounds so simple… that is until we pause and contemplate what the energy source will be to produce all of that electricity. Wind power has its limitations (and problems); the use of oil is a no-no; and nuclear power scares us all.

The other point of view for global warming is to do nothing: the rise in global temperature is not due to our use of fossil fuels, but is due to a periodic occurrence in Earth’s ongoing temperature changes. This ‘solution’ to global warming is enjoyed by some politicians because they can ignore the concern and continue letting industry pollute the world. There is some truth here: the Earth does cycle periodically through temperature changes. The most recent was the Eocene epoch, 34 million years ago. Does that logic apply today? No, civilization will be long gone by the next occurrence.

Is there a solution to the global warming issue? Unfortunately, no. We enjoy telling ourselves that technology will solve our problems, but it’s possible to wait too late to get started. Ignoring the issue accomplishes nothing. A concern for the electricity solution is that this would put our entire civilization with a single-source dependency: heat, light, transportation, and electronics. Any failure in the network would send us back to the 19th century but without the requisite knowledge from the 19th century.

So, for most of the issues we are concerned about, there are solutions, even just self-preservation ones. For global warming, since we can do nothing of substance, all we can do is do less. We hope that, in some way, our lessening of our carbon footprint allows civilization a few more years.