The world isn’t doing anything to stop or reverse global warming. Which, considering that it could literally result in human extinction, is totally insane. What if the existential threat were more cinematic?
If Climate Change Were an Asteroid, Humanity Would Drop Everything To Stop It
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As we came down out of the trees, we kept some survival traits that don’t serve us so well any more.
“Why worry about tomorrow when there’s a sabretooth on my tail today?”
“Why worry about the volcano when I can’t do anything about it anyway?”
“Why worry about Gronk’s health when my own kids are hungry?”
Putting it off until tomorrow *was* a fine & dandy survival trait. If we actually worried about all the things that *could* happen, we’d never leave the cave. Unfortunately, global warming is both “tomorrow” and “I can’t do anything about it.” If history is any guide we won’t do a damn thing about climate change until it bites us in the ass. Which it’s starting to do now …
Jay Inslee – WA state governor and sometime US Representative has announced his run for Prez on a climate change platform. He’s a good guy from all I’ve heard, but he hasn’t got the name recognition it’d take to get the nomination.
BUT he should keep Global Warming a Hot Topic (see what I did there?) so that’s all to the good.
If your goal is to Send A Message, you could do worse than voting for him in the primary.
Boiling the frog slowly, Ted. We humans are notoriously bad at risk calculation : one big thing that risks wiping out a lot of people all at once gets a reaction ; small, incremental steps that lead to the same dénouement do not. (On the other hand, the talking heads tell us that the DPRK, with perhaps 15-20 nuclear war heads, is a dire threat to world peace, while they do not consider the US, which possesses at the very least more than 300 times so many and has, unlike the DPRK, a track record of using them, to be such a threat. So it’s not only gradual threats which are ignored….)
Henri
Hi Henri,
Re: ” … incremental steps that lead to … wiping out a lot of people …” (edited)
I include “economic austerity” policies among said deadly incremental steps.
Indeed. On the other hand, falco, I suspect they are are unlikely to wipe out quite as many as anthropogenic climate change, which should do for us all….
Henri