I never wanted to spend my senior years on a dying planet, but that's what it looks like to me. The supposed leadership of the most industrialized countries are doing the very least to curb global warming, and have even decided, it seems, to promote the short-term benefits of fossil fuel usage for their electoral cycle (yes, I'm criticizing Biden over the Willow project).
We're looking at the results of climate change in the eye all the time--take the weird winter of California's discontent: that isn't some freak global cooling, but a predictable weirding of the weather because patterns are disrupted. But we are still stuck with the effects of warming in the usually cooler places. We can see the devastation of our ecosystems in the deaths of fish due to heat waves in Australia. The southern hemisphere has been through it this past season.
Climate change isn't predicting the future, but describing our present, now. And we are still jaded and in denial. Lives will be lost if action is not taken, but a look around social media indicates that loads of people still believe climate science is some kind of hoax. A conspiracy theory.
I'm just a D-list blogger--I don't expect what I say to gain any traction and actually, my climate-related posts aren't even the ones that do any numbers. But what I do know is, changing people's POV via messaging and "flooding the zone" can be done--because the denialists have been doing it all this time. Solutions exist and funding them (like actually just fully comping changeover to solar energy or heat pumps) are within the reach of government actions. (Programs totally exist and are inadequate for many homeowners.)
We can do more, and more aggressively. The political will has to be there, and the idea that the fossil fuel industry and the denialist-propagandist complex (like Fox News, who are known liars) needs to be called out for being the problem that they are.
I think we still have the opportunity to make a better future. But that opportunity can't be pissed away--it must be vigorously and intelligently seized.
2 comments:
You did exactly the thing, and you did it with excellence. I'm going to go toot your link on Mastodon now. We absolutely can be actively getting there.
People are angry about immigration now? Ha! Just wait. all of Mexico and southern US will be intolerable as temperatures climb over 120F. Governing in South America will get real interesting as people go south to escape the heat of the equator. Population increase there will certainly effect the rain forest. That's just this hemisphere.
The largest typhoon in history hit the east coast of South Africa 2 wks ago. The NPR report noted that it packed more energy than an entire hurricane season of the US. Worse, it did a loop back on to the coast of South Africa.
I'm confident there are people within our government that see this, as the military has considered climate change the #1 problem since the mid 90's. They know migration is going to be a huge issue.
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