The United States is obsessed with problems. Accordingly, our culture has become overly concerned with discussing, debating and finding solutions to these problems. The dilemma lies in situations where groups or businesses exploit our problem-finding nature for political or monetary gain.

Our obsession with finding and fixing problems can be a good thing, like in cases of cancer research, crime prevention, overcoming poverty and suffering. When people band together to fix real problems The United States is living up to its ideals. Each year charities and service organizations are supported by hundreds of thousands of well-meaning people, a testament to the American spirit.

Other times our desire to fix problems is recognized by companies or politicians who create problems for us to solve, with their help and to their benefit, of course.

Some of these issues are decades old. Listerine, for instance, created a bad breath scare in the early 1900s using print ads that told of horrible situations in which bad breath ruined people’s lives. The term halitosis was taken from Latin to describe this new epidemic. Listerine’s sales had been poor, until people realized they, too, could suffer from halitosis, and they might not even know it. Listerine’s sales went through the roof, and the world became obsessed with fixing bad breath.

Other examples of business exploitation occur even in our day. Antibacterial soap has been touted as being able to kill bacteria and keep a household safe from harm. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention disagrees, arguing that with normal use, antibacterial soap does nothing more than regular soap to clean and disinfect. It’s all a ploy to get you to buy a new brand of soap.

The granddaddy of all of these issues is the political tool. Politicians find some vague and unanswerable issue, assign its cause to their competitor, and tell the world everything will fall apart because of their opponent. Such is the case with global warming.

Democrats are blaming Republicans for weather problems, including hurricane Katrina, which they associate with global warming. It’s convenient to blame the weather on a political rival, but unfounded.

During the years 800 to 1300, the earth experienced a warming period that changed climates. From 1300 to 1900 the earth experienced a cooling period.

“There is no convincing evidence from each of the individual climate proxies to suggest that higher temperatures occurred in the 20th century than in the Medieval Warm Period,” said Willie Soon, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in a presentation to the U.S. Senate. Soon also said it would be illogical to assume humans had any effect on climate.

James M. Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, said the discussion of global warming is a politically driven debate devised to secure votes for Democrats, according to The Washington Times.

Consumers and citizens should think for themselves and not just accept the multitude of catastrophic claims thrown at the public.

Sometimes threats are real and action needs to be taken, but more often we find ourselves victims of advertising or political strategy. Information can be the key to protecting ourselves from exploitation and separating truth from fiction. With libraries, the Internet, professional journals and professors at our fingertips, university students should be the most informed and least vulnerable of any population sample. Unfortunately, our academic laziness is making us vulnerable as well.

Read reports, e-mail professors your questions and discuss the issues with other students. Knowledge can save us money, time and undue concern. It’s the only way to protect ourselves from being used.