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December 20, 2009
Message from Copenhagen: Let them eat cake.
The failure of one hundred ninety-odd sovereign nations meeting in Copenhagen to deal effectively with the climate crisis last week should not have been surprising, given the ambient disagreement over whether Planet Earth even has a climate problem. The US, although flat broke at the moment (blame it on Obama!), is still arguably among the more advanced and powerful nations “on the planet,” yet one does not have to look far to find “climate deniers;” they are even more common this year than Holocaust deniers and 9/11 deniers were in the past. In general they tend to be like those other naysayers: conservative religious fundamentalists who view coercion as the preferred solution to human problems. Beyond that, the main reason for the rest of us to worry about our future may be that a majority of scientists are climate change worriers.Of course, scientists also have problems of their own, one of which is bickering over details; but fundamentalist non-scientists are used to that. Aren’t those pointy-headed scientists also notorious for flip-flopping?
Given the track record of the modern world for aggressive commercial and military exploitation of the latest scientific discoveries while also restricting their benefits on the basis of ability to pay, the prospects of finding a climate solution that won’t also leave a significant fraction of living humans scrambling to survive appear dim. All of which reminds me: denial has become as common as it is because we humans have never liked being bummed out by bad news.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at December 20, 2009 08:22 PM