We Need to Literally Declare War on Climate Change
newrepublic.com
newrepublic.com
War on Poverty anyone? War on Drugs? War on Terror? The list goes on.
It is clear to me that we are not going to prevent climate change. It requires too much cooperation and sacrifice to deal with a problem that is too abstract. Things will have to get much worse before we will be willing to take dramatic measures. I'm expecting we'll lose a city to rising sea levels, and then maybe things will happen. Meanwhile, we'll simply have to deal with the symptoms as they come.
Why do USians always need to declare war on something? (With the exception, of course, of their actual wars. You know, the ones with guns and bombs and stuff!)
Discussion and action should be continually focused on cleaning up our act across multiple areas for the purpose of being responsible and innovative custodians of this planet.
Waterways, deforestation, soil contamination, wildlife, air quality, energy efficiency, agriculture, resource management... with the aim of "improving living standards and health, creating a better world for next gen"; rather than just "stop climate change".
We are too obsessed with "climate change" and debating whether it's natural or man-made or a mix of both, and whether it can be stopped or slowed. Who cares? We know climate can change all by itself anyway, so cleaning our act up to "stop climate change" is to me a rather pointless agenda designed for convenience rather than accuracy and depth of information. The scope of the world's problems deserves more than a two word umbrella caption.
None of these wars are going well. Perhaps we should rethink the whole "let's declare war on [bad thing]"
>As investigative journalists have shown over the past year, the oil giant Exxon knew all about global warming for decades—yet spent millions to spread climate-denial propaganda. The only way to overcome that concerted opposition—from the very same industrial forces that opposed America’s entry into World War II—is to adopt a wartime mentality, rewriting the old mindset that stands in the way of victory. “The first step is we have to win,” says Jonathan Koomey, an energy researcher at Stanford University. “That is, we have to have broad acceptance among the broader political community that we need urgent action, not just nibbling around the edges, which is what the D.C. crowd still thinks.”
The fact is, all these wars constitute a further denigration of individual liberties for some aims of a lofty collective goal. That's what's meant by "war". I imagine what the author is trying to say is that any kind of "climate denial" or dissent be discouraged which would amount to a restriction on speech. And like the other wars, I imagine these restrictions will last much longer than anticipated.
You can believe that global warming is real and a threat, but still be against a political solution. Nothing was ever solved by just making people poorer. Perhaps individuals should focus their efforts on a positive solution to global change such as changing where and how people live. This normally takes place through the markets. So if someone lives in a high-flood risk zone, they pay higher insurance rates or suffer the consequences when a flood does hit. This discourages them from building in these areas. No forced evacuation necessary. But in order for a peaceful restructuring of people's lives to account for a changing world, we have to let these effects play out and dispel the notion that someone is entitled to something by virtue of the past.
I have given up hope about any meaningful change when it comes to climate change. Earth overshoot day, when humanity has used up all of earth's resources for this year and is borrowing from the future, comes earlier every year. Yet any politician that strives for zero growth is discarded as irrational and stupid.
So what do they do? In my home country all the heavy industries has moved to cheaper countries, so now they get to brag that our CO2e emissions have gone down, when the truth is we just exported them.
No one will ever take any political decision that will lead to a big decline in what we perceive as quality of life. Instead, there are investments that will boost some sort of fantasy climate change reducing tech that will give more people jobs so that they can consume even more...
In the aggregate, we're a stupid short sighted self important primate. And the vast majority of that debt has gone toward blowing shit up, and maintaining the preeminent ability to blow shit up. But then we have scared little white old bunny rabbits who keep voting for scared fat white old bunny rabbits who talk about diplomacy being bullshit and turning the middle east into glass is the solution for our problems. It's a neurological disorder up and down the voting scale. So, surprising? Not at all.