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Dear Climate Campaigners: You – we – need to get serious about saving the planet. Any day now would be great. I know we’ve been at it for 30-some years, and this would be a great year to finally get it right and break through.
In a previous and apparently somewhat controversial article I laid out what individuals are likely to do as despair and anger rise over climate inaction. I was not recommending these actions, but some readers interpreted it that way and seemed very threatened by what desperate individuals will do.
There is an influential school of thought that says if someone knows the truth, he will accept it. The environmental and social justice movement largely subscribes to this, and thus the tremendous focus on events that raise awareness, from candlelight vigils to An Inconvenient Truth.
Capitalist theory clearly breaks down when it comes to the climate crisis – or many other forms of pollution.
Most of the ‘climate realists’ I have spoken with, whether in an interview on our radio show or in casual conversation, went through some sort of journey to get the point where they accept climate reality; it often wasn’t easy. My case is no different; I did not always accept reality, but now understand why Gandhi once said “Truth is God.”
On a fairly regular basis, I get people saying I’m a kook, an extremist, nuts, and recently an eco-fascist, all because of my writings on climate change. I prefer to think of myself as well-grounded in reality. Why the disconnect?
“Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.” Robert Heinlein
Some time ago, we interviewed James Howard Kunstler on our now-defunct radio show about climate change, Breakin Ice, and he despaired that the morons in the United States were making sensible action – such as self-preservation – impossible.
Population has not been raised as a major issue in climate talks, but it should be. China is the only country that has mentioned it at all.
The Great Global Warming Inquisition: Where Scientists are Galileo and the Church is Market Fundamentalism. Four hundred years ago, the Catholic Church found Galileo Galilei “vehemently suspect of heresy” and sentenced him to house arrest for the remainder of his life.
Dear Politicians and Zealots: I am not a Conservative. Or a Liberal. Or a Libertarian, or a Socialist. I am a Realist – I Want What Works and is Fair. Most of us don’t fit into your convenient categories.
Every person I know who has faced the reality of our climate crisis battles with feelings of despair, some or all of the time. When you pull the pieces together and take what the scientists are saying and combine it with our foreseeable political reality, it is hard not to believe we are doomed.
