Caring
Yesterday, after posting the climate change story, I just couldn't seem to get in a good mood. At the gym where I work out, my workout buddies would ask how I was, and would say that I was grumpy. Almost everyone I saw, I told about the new Climate Change Report.
Upstairs in the lounge of the Hotel where I workout, I ran into a corporate lawyer, whom I know well, and another young, rather successful republican writer. I told them about the report.
The lawyer said, he wasn't going to stop driving his 10 mile per gallon vehicle. He even went so far as to say, that there was nothing he could do about it.
I told him how he could buy green energy from the local utility at a slightly higher rate that would allow the utility to invest in more renewable energy. In fact that day, the Utility had announced the addition of another 125 MWs of windpower to its generation portfolio.He wasn't aware of the program, even though the five star hotel we were talking in purchases its electricity on the utility's green rate. The young successful republican writer type didn't know about it either.
This particular green pricing program is the most successful in the country, so some people know about it. The Utility runs large billboards throughout the town promoting the wind and the people and companies that buy it.
Now, this lawyer and this writer are not stupid or uncaring.
They may be a little insensitive, but they are basically good guys.
But they are totally oblivious to the present and future danger of climate change to their comfortable way of life. And they are a very long way from considering what they need to do to respond to it, either proactively or retroactively.
All night, as I ran into people, I told them about the report. I told them that the NYT had not published a thing about the story, that practically no American media had covered the story at all.
No one really cared that much.
Some thought is was sad that our media was so controlled.
Others just looked at me with that look.
They hated to see me in a bad mood.
I have been writing about climate change for 20 years now.
And sometimes I feel like the geophysicists
who called the interior ministers of the governments of
Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, and said,
There is a tsunami coming!
Tell the people to prepare by leaving the coast immediately.
Of course, there was no tsunami to be seen.
But there was a huge burst of energy traveling
under the water at just under the speed of sound.
The wave did not appear until it was upon its victims.
That's when they care.
The climate change wave may not appear until it is upon us.
And that's when we will care.
posted by oZ @ 2:22 AM
7 Comments:
But I want to go shopping!
Seriously, how do you motivate people do pay attention to a problem they don't see?
Well, the president had done pretty well using a rather old and reliable technique called FEAR
A large percent of people still do not believe climate change is real. There is still a lot of propaganda from some of the american oil companies and the coal companies that cast uncertainty on the need to act. The media feels obliged to give both sides even though the vast majority of scientists in the world endorse the basic foundations of climate change science.
People do not fear climate change or global warming because it is not true. It is left wing global baloney.
The elemental forces behind Climate Change are not very likely to be effected by those who choose to ingore them. Ignoring the science behind climate change is a climate change strategy we should not embrace.
the science is propaganda from the UN.
Whoa now partner. I think you will find that parts per million have gone from 270 to 365 and even the Cato institute will agree with that. Interpreting what that extra blanket of CO2 will do may be open to propaganda, but the basic data is pretty conclusive.
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