The Easter Island story of ecocide through decadence has become part of the accepted truth of modern culture. Now it looks like it may never happened, and that the moral to be drawn is not one of human frailty and vanity, but one of human resilience.
Is it though? The realization that the Rapa Nui didn’t destroy their island couldn’t have come at a worse time. Generally society is driven by myths, ones believed to be true. The Rapa Nui weren’t to blame for the destruction of their home. Now to what myth can we turn in order to exemplify why we have to act to prevent and mitigate further climate change? Ecocide wasn’t the deserved myth, it was the necessary one.
>Now to what myth can we turn in order to exemplify why we have to act to prevent and mitigate further climate change?
We don't need myths, we have actual science. If people don't believe the science they aren't going to care about the myths.
You actually have it backwards: only the people who have already bought into some myth care about the science at all. The human brain doesn’t take data and create a story, it adapts data to the story to which it already cleaves.