From the Editor.
by Neil Caudle
Twenty years ago, when I worked at a university down the road, people showed up for a meeting and lit cigarettes. Very often, almost all of the men at the table were puffing away, filling the room with their smoke. Presumably, these were rational, educated men, most of them with doctoral degrees. They had read the Surgeon General’s warning; they had seen the dire statistics. But on that campus, smoking was a point of honor. The men were exercising their freedom, demonstrating their loyalty. After all, tobacco was essential to our economy, and it was paying a share of the bill.
Only a few years later, no one smoked in university buildings; smoking there was against the law. But the change ran much deeper than mere regulation. Opinion had shifted, and now it was dirty and shameful to smoke.
Today, we crowd onto highways in gigantic cars, exhaust pipes all puffing away. It’s a point of honor. We are exercising our freedom. Yes, we have read the warnings, the dire statistics. We know that the oil we are burning is scarcer and scarcer, and mostly in foreign control. We know that the gases that rise from our cars and our factories and our power plants are heating the globe. We are rational, educated people, but we’re living on faith. We believe that science and technology will come to the rescue. Somebody smart will invent a contraption that saves us, or will someday discover a new source of fuel.
Sometimes, science does come to the rescue. But often it can’t. No one invented a nifty contraption to let people smoke without wrecking their health. We had to learn how to stop. The same thing applies to this matter of oil and the gases that build in the atmosphere, trapping the heat. We’ve been doing something shameful and dirty. It’s time now to learn how to stop.
Neil Caudle is the Editor of Endeavors magazine.
