The journalists of the conservative media often make the claim that climate change has a marginal impact on society at large and that it’s an issue of interest only for rich liberal elites.

Do these people actually visit the places most damaged by climate trends?

If they did, it would be difficult for them to describe the plight of these often-impoverished areas as a white-collar elitist’s problem.

Not one of them would dare claim that the victims of hurricane Katrina were mostly a bunch of college snobs.

Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida lose over a football field’s worth of wetlands everyday because of salt-water intrusion and rising sea levels. My hometown of Cut Off is roughly 12 miles wide because of this phenomenon and  — I assure you — it’s not flush with Hollywood actors and liberal millionaires.

The gulf coast is not the only region affected by the changing planet. In California, three consecutive years of drought have impacted the productivity of farmland in southern California. That means that thousands of migrant farmers’ jobs are threatened.

I wonder if these pundits are visiting the hundreds of newly homeless families and chastising their elitist lifestyles.

These same environmental emergencies can be seen across the globe, and what’s missing from this discussion is a more politically-conscious acknowledgement of the destabilizing effects that climate change has on the lower class.

In a May 18 New York Times article, Thomas Friedman notes that the Syrian government’s failure to respond to the worst drought in Syria’s modern history played a significant role in causing the revolution.

With 60 percent of its land mass affected by the drought and an inadequate supply of water, some 800,000 Syrian farmers and herders have lost their jobs. Thousands of angry, energized men and women without work or basic necessities seem primed for revolution.

More often than not, climate change is  reduced to a punch line by the journalists at Fox News and other politicians seduced by Big Oil campaign donors. These people are the real elitists.

Climate change is something that has real political and social consequences.

It shouldn’t be treated as an issue that only high-minded liberals care about. Human-caused climate change affects all of us who can’t afford to buy artisan water or to evacuate before a hurricane hits.

Climate change sure doesn’t seem like an elitist problem to me.