Do We Really Believe in Climate Change?
Throwing doubt on the fire
It’s been one of the warmest winters I can remember. I live in northern New York, just an hour from the Canadian border. Aside from a cold snap that lasted a week in early December, it’s been humid and raining. The Olympic ski mountain near where I live has only a portion of its trails open. Further evidence of warming is ubiquitous — just a Google search away. Yearly averages are rising. Heatwaves last year scorched not only the Middle East, but the United Kingdom. Further calamities — droughts, floods, storms, wildfires — are also easy to find.
Yet, I keep coming back to something a Medium user recently said to me:
Neither you nor I really believe in climate change. If we did, we would be manning the barricades, we would be part of endless strikes, traffic would be snarled for months. We would be blowing up pipelines, sinking oil tankers, and assassinating our corrupt ineffectual leaders.
Damn.
This comment has really stuck with me. I’ve made similar observations myself (though not about assassinating anyone), about the dissonance surrounding climate change. We have the data, we have compelling insights about it, but around us, life goes on as usual.
Why?
