While reading Don Quixote recently, I realized why this 400-year-old novel remains a classic of Western literature. At the heart of the story line lies an unchanging and always-identifiable quality of human nature: our tendency to be blinded by obsession.

Don Quixote is the story of Alonso Quixano, who, enchanted with chivalrous ideals and suffering hallucinations of grandeur, dubs himself Don Quixote de la Mancha before taking up the lance and sword and embarking on a mission to rescue the helpless and destroy the wicked. Blinded by his yearning for grand escapades and glory, the delusional warrior lives life outside of reality.

In Chapter Seven, Don Quixote and his long-suffering squire, Sancho, encounter windmills that the misguided knight mistakes for murderous “hulking giants.” “Fortune is guiding our affairs,” he says to his slightly befuddled friend. “Do you see over yonder … thirty or more huge giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them ….” Perplexed, Sancho tries to explain that they are just windmills. But Don Quixote derides his squire as an ignoramus, and, seeing his opportunity for glory, lowers his lance, spurs his rather decrepit steed and charges into battle against the “hulking giants.”

“Fly not, cowards and vile caitiffs,” he cries, when a slight breeze turns the arms on the windmills, “one knight alone attacks you!”

Four hundred years later, it’s impossible for me to read this scene and not think about Don Gore de la Tierra, as American Thinker’s Marc Sheppard dubbed him.

This former American vice president spearheads a largely delusional movement that perceives man-made global warming as a “hulking giant” that will crush mankind and end the world in just a few decades!

Since losing the American presidency to George W. Bush in 2000, Al Gore, with willing scientists and Hollywood icons as his lance and armor and the mainstream press as his faithful steed, has worked obsessively to convince humanity that climate change is the greatest threat to human civilization.

His obsession has borne fruit. Climate change and related subjects routinely headline major news reports around the world. The subject sits atop the agenda of virtually every major international organization on Earth, especially the United Nations. Billions of dollars have been and are being spent on proving and promulgating the theory. The scientific world is awash with discussions, studies and heated debates on the subject. Climate change is a staple subject in state, federal and international political discussions. It is a primary talking point for U.S. presidential candidates.

The planet as a whole now fears this “hulking giant”!

Last week Ted Turner, founder of cnn, warned in a pbs interview that global warming will lead to most people being killed, and survivors being driven to cannibalism. Hollywood icons, famous intellectuals, prominent scientists and mainstream media documentaries (such as abc’s Last Days on Earth) consistently warn that global warming is the number-one threat to human civilization!

Still, that’s not enough for Don Gore de la Tierra.

Also last week, the Nobel laureate—with the near-euphoric mainstream media trotting enthusiastically beneath him—rolled out his new, three-year, $300-million green media blitz. This latest campaign, to which Gore contributes heavily (as he is happy to tell you), is designed to educate the American public on the need to confront global warming now.

Perplexed Sanchos are voicing their alarm at the Don’s grand “hulking giant” delusion, but obsessed Don Quixote followers continue charging at the windmill.

Meanwhile, in the real world, real-life and much more immediate, much more dangerous hulking giants receive far less attention than they demand!

Climate alarmists admit that global warming is a long-term threat to humanity. But, at the same time, they charge forward as if climate change could obliterate mankind tomorrow. Meanwhile, serious crises that could literally explode tomorrow are misreported, underreported, or ignored.

Global warming has become a blinding obsession that distracts us from reality!

Consider the global oil market, for example. Oil and gas prices hit new records yesterday. Most of us are reminded how high gas prices are every time we fill our tanks, and the topic does get some airtime in the mainstream press. But the fundamental reasons for the high gas prices and the potential catastrophes that could result from further price hikes or disruptions to the oil supply are barely considered.

What if a massive attack occurs on a major oil pipeline next week? Or an oil embargo? Or a refinery shuts down? What if Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a man admittedly bent on ushering in Armageddon, decides to make good on his threat to close the Strait of Hormuz? Oil could hit $200, $300, $400 a barrel. Gas prices would rocket. Millions would struggle to operate their vehicles. Forced to spend more money on fuel, other bills would go unpaid, consumption of other goods and services would plummet, and the entire economy, already rupturing, would hemorrhage uncontrollably. Food prices, as high as they are, would soar as farmers poured more money into operating machinery and truckers demanded higher rates to truck food around the country. A prolonged disruption would create the ideal climate for social unrest, even anarchy, as alarm besieges a population accustomed to wealth and prosperity. And that’s just the beginning. International chaos and conflict would erupt, as national leaders hunted down oil for their unhinged societies and economies.

Sound ridiculous? Perhaps. Impossible? Far less so than global warming causing cannibalism. Yet Al Gore and the mainstream media are embarking on a $300 million campaign to educate Americans about a unproven problem that may prove catastrophic in 50 years!

What about spending $300 million on a campaign to alert Americans to the catastrophe that could erupt next week?

The same applies to food prices and shortages. Worldwide, the cost of food is rising lightning fast—yes, even faster than sea levels. The cost of wheat, rice and soybeans, staples for billions, are soaring, and people are becoming unsettled. “The security implications [of high food prices] should also not be underestimated,” said Sir John Holmes, UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs. “[F]ood riots are already being reported across the globe” (emphasis mine throughout). Holmes made his remarks after two days of recent rioting in Egypt over the soaring cost of basic foodstuffs. “Current food price trends are likely to increase sharply both the incidence and depth of food insecurity,” he said.

Surely we can envision the societal crises this trend portends. People with hungry bellies, particularly those accustomed to plenty, could go to extreme lengths to satisfy their hunger.

In addition to Egypt, rising food costs have been blamed for riots and unrest in Haiti, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Mauritania, Mozambique, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Bolivia and Indonesia. Governments in Asia are curbing rice exports to ensure enough remains for their own people. In America, more people are on food stamps today than at any time since the aid program began in the 1960s. A worldwide food catastrophe is brewing.

But despite worsening conditions affecting the one commodity nobody can live without, the true magnitude of this trend goes largely unnoticed. As Tim Lang, professor of food policy at the University of Leeds, said, “We are sleepwalking into a crisis.”

Western societies and governments are so consumed by their furious charge at the perceived hulking global warming giant that they fail to see the real-life hulking giants stalking them from behind; giants, mind you, that pose an infinitely greater threat in the short term than the long-term, unsubstantiated crisis of global climate change!

Consider the questions and alarm a $300 million media campaign on the problem of nuclear terrorism or the rupturing American economy could arouse in the minds of Americans. Like oil and food, these crises, under the right conditions, could touch off an avalanche of destruction that would encompass the Earth.

These threats, among a few others, are the most imminent threats to human civilization and demand our fullest attention. The Western media dance around these issues from time to time, but ultimately our over-the-top obsession with global warming ensures that most people remain blind to their true nature and magnitude.

If you’re interested in learning why the human mind has an innate proclivity to be blinded by obsession—as well as why it is so easy to deceive—read Human Nature: What Is It? It’s a profound little booklet!