<
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/14/big-oil-climate-crisis-fossil-fuel-public>
"You may think we have all the proof we need. More of it is in front of us
right now, with heatwaves scorching through Europe, breaking records, wreaking
havoc. In Athens, they closed the Acropolis on Friday as temperatures at the
site headed towards 48C. In Lisbon, visitors expecting perfect blue skies have
been disappointed to find them streaked with grey – not clouds, but smoke from
forest fires. In Italy, there was no spring this year: floods gave way to
unbearable heat with barely a pause.
It’s happening all over – biblical downpours in New York state, unquenchable
fires in Canada – and yet humanity is not acting as if it is confronting a
planetary emergency. Extreme weather is fast becoming the norm in the US, and
yet Americans tell pollsters it is a low priority, ranking it 17th out of 21
national issues in a recent Pew survey. Even when the impact is personal, as it
was for many Australians when bushfires raged through the country in 2019,
opinions prove stubbornly hard to shift: one study found that among those
“directly impacted” by the fires, around a third saw no connection to the
climate. They were “unmoved.”
How can this be? How can we, like Nero, fiddle while the Earth burns? Some of
the explanation lies in human nature. As a species, we tend to prioritise the
urgent over the important: “Thanks to our evolutionary history, we’re
programmed to deal with the lion coming from the woods, not to strategise how
to save our civilisation over the next hundred years,” Jeff Goodell, author of
an essential new book,
The Heat Will Kill You First, tells me.
There is, too, the syndrome captured so well by the movie
Don’t Look Up,
namely the very human inability to contemplate our own destruction. We will
find almost any excuse to look elsewhere, to find something immediate and
diverting: in Britain this week, it was the alleged conduct of a BBC TV
presenter. But there’s always something."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
