If unified national and international commitment could achieve monumental progress during crises like the world wars, a similar level of coordinated mobilization is required today. A wartime economic restructuring transitions society at emergency speed off fossil fuels through massive investments, just transition programs, and an enduring rationing of carbon pollution. Government mandates modernize infrastructure, transportation, manufacturing and agriculture along renewable lines while stimulating sustainable jobs and industries.
International cooperation leverages strengths and resources, from research collaborations to emissions pacts holding all nations accountable. Wealthy emitters aid economic transition of frontline nations suffering first from weather extremes. A progressive carbon fee program funds mitigation efforts while incentivizing structural economic changes. Grants assist vulnerable communities relocating from rising seas and intensifying natural disasters.
Prioritizing collectivity and justice transforms sacrifices into liberating progress for all humankind. With science as the commanding general, nonviolent civil disobedience compels stubborn political systems to catalyze transformations long stalled by obstructionism and misinformation. But societal will aligned behind solutions offers hope where bleakness once prevailed.
The problem being, of course, that conservatives and capitalism are ruining everything. Just look at how we fared at COVID. If we can’t get the entire population to stay at home and wear masks to protect themselves against a global pandemic, how the heck are we supposed to get them to stay at home and wear masks to protect themselves against climate change?
Good question. I know people who never had any problems trusting medication and vaccines, but then with COVID they suddenly parroted the idea that masks and vaccines don’t work. A few days ago a friend said the famous line that “Ukraine was invented in the 20th century to damage Russia, they’re actually Russians”. I tried to tell him the story of how Kievan Rus’ came to be from a Norse people to a primarily Slavic state, and how modern Russia isn’t the same thing as medieval Rus’, but he cut me off mid sentence and said that he knows that story and doesn’t believe it.
You literally can’t say anything to that. With every conspiracy theory, you can say, show and prove whatever you want, but you will always be defeated by the answer: “I don’t believe that”, and you can’t argue belief away with facts. Also the same people who said that the Earth isn’t getting warmer are now saying that it’s due to natural cycles where the Earth is closer to the Sun.
What I’m trying to say is that a lot of people take these things (global warming, covid, war in Ukraine, the EU, NATO…) personally and emotionally, not on a factual basis. Hell, some people deny that we had an air pollution problem in Serbia when you could literally see and smell the disguisting air yourself.
How to get through to these people before it’s too too late is beyond me, but an information campaign wouldn’t do much because you could give me the biggest and best scientific report about human effects on the climate, signed by every scientist on the planet, and I could just say “I don’t believe that” and that’s it. The question we need to answer is: “Why do people get so angry about man made climate change?”
My dad is a boomer and up until the last year or so, he was one of those classic “the earth is just going through cycles” climate change deniers. The weather we’ve had in the last year has changed him, we’ve had multiple huge storms where he would say he’s never seen that in his life, and he’s lived in the same area for over 60 years. He’s now convinced that we as humans are completely screwed and the climate is fucked. And he’s right.
That’s just the denial to doomer pipeline which is part of the same propaganda machine.
The truth is we can stop it getting worse, and even reverse some of the damage. The costs to do so are miniscule compared to the average oil war. The people telling him what to think don’t want that though.
I wish I had your experience. We also had unprecedented storms these last few months (I was caught once in the thick of it when I was outside, I almost drowned in the rain since it poured so hard, never have I seen such storms), and people started blaming HAARP. Funnily enough, I started reading Aristotle’s “Rhetoric” after writing that comment and literally in the first chapter he says:
Another translation says that instructing “masses of people” is impossible, but in any case, the point stands: demonstrating the truth with facts is not the same as convincing someone that something is true, and as Nathan J. Robinson said in his excellent article The Intellectual We Deserve:
Yeah I was impressed he actually did change his opinion. He’s weird like that though, like he’s definitely a bit of the old school boomer racist when he talks about black people, Asians, Arabs etc. but, his last job before he retired he worked with a bunch of people of all different races. And he would come home saying like “Oh yeah I worked with a bunch of Koreans today, they are all such great guys!” Or he’d tell me about how helpful and nice some Indian guy was to him, or how some black guy was so nice and such a hard worker.
But then he would go right back to blaming immigrants for everything, or thinking that black people are coming to torch their neighbourhood. He’s not actually racist to the people he meets in real life, just the theoretical shit he hears on the news.
Tabatha wasn’t being cruel, she was being observant. Because that’s exactly what Jordan Peterson is: a failed psychologist who became a book writer and pseudo intellectual. He has no original thought and his ideas don’t hold any weight.
Well, that’s exactly what the quote says. The fact that so many people turn to people like him, despite them having nothing to do with reality, shows us that real scientists and thinkers are evidently not reaching out to people in a receptive way. Thus, getting people to realize the dangers of man made climate change cannot be done solely with information and scienetific clout, because those who deny it are not in denial due to factual reasons.
Peterson is just a great example of that: if millions of people are more inclined to listen to a confused man (to put it mildly) ramble incoherently about everything and anything, rather than people who are specialized and know what they’re talking about, we’re going about it the wrong way. If we’re ever going to get the vast majority to realize what climate change is, we need a new approach, and the discovery of that approach could stem from understanding why someone who has nothing of value to say can become so influential.
Whether these people that follow them are desperate, stupid, confused, angry or something else is worth asking only insofar as we can derermine why they feel that their problems are addressed by clowns like Peterson. Because, at least in my experience, people who deny climate change get outright angry when you try to convince them otherwise. Even if you mind your own business, some people get triggered by the fact that I carry empty plastic bottles to a recycling container rather than throwing them in the general garbadge bin. It’s obviousy not a factual disagreement, but an emotional one. That’s why they were addressed as “desperate”, and not “stupid”.
Speaking of people’s attitudes and older generations, I’m hopeful that general desire to act will really increase over time: