The very things causing climate change are also causing many other environmental ills – air & water pollution, ocean acidification, deforestation, desertification, poisons in the food chain, animal & plant extinction are just some of the big ones – and therefore the remedies to climate change will clear up a lot of other environmental problems, and we should all be constantly reminded of that.
What’s good or bad for the environment is highly correlated with what’s good or bad for human health. Eating less (or no) meat & other animal products, eating organic, eating local; walking or biking rather than driving a car, taking the stairs rather than the elevator; avoiding plastic, avoiding power tools such as leaf blowers & power mowers when manual tools work just fine; using clean energy rather than dirty energy, especially coal & tar sands oil – from its extraction in dangerous coal mines throughout the whole process, coal leaves terrible damage to the environment and human (& animal) health in many ways: we should really strive for banning the production & use of coal in the US.
Our primary solutions need to work with nature, not against it. All these centuries we’ve tried to master nature, and now nature is getting back at us with a vengeance. At some point, we may have to consider taking huge measures to protect ourselves that will require major technological & mechanical feats, but such measures are fraught with peril & could come with dangerous repercussions, and it is much less expensive and provides a much healthier lifestyle to work with nature to find solutions to global warming, especially preventative ones.
The powers that be preventing solutions to our climate & environmental problems are the same ones that are preventing solutions to a whole host of other economic, political & societal problems. We must align ourselves with groups tackling these other challenges to fight these powers and spread information about what they’re doing to our country & our planet to as many people as we can. The solution to any of these problems can & should be designed to help other problems. For example, a carbon fee might not only help price out carbon emitting energies & products, but depending how it’s applied & what the revenue is used for, could also reduce wealth inequality, reduce our debt, fund research & development of cleaner technologies and/or expand mass transit. A jobs program that stresses converting to green energy & infrastructure not only alleviates unemployment, but also rebuilds our crumbling infrastructure as well as reduces pollution & energy use. A very progressive income tax system can be designed so that our debt is addressed while alleviating poverty, and in the long run, by reducing the percentage of our budget paying interest on our debt, leave us funds to apply to other pressing needs we have. As we reboot our lagging education system, we should make sure environmentally sustainable principles are thoroughly taught in the schools, and courses designed for careers in clean energy & technology are encouraged.
Everybody should keep in mind, when comparing 2 opposing points of view, especially when 1 side directly contradicts the other, who has motive to lie and who has a motive to tell the truth. Huge corporations that stand to gain lots of money if it is generally believed that there is no man-made climate change, and if no significant infringements are applied on their behavior, can continue business as usual, plundering our resources and making lots of money off it: plenty of (self-serving) reasons to lie. Scientists & educators are in the business of finding & spreading the truth. They are generally well-educated, scientifically knowledgeable & are interested in the general welfare of mankind. They look out for the long-term welfare of our citizens, especially our children: their motive is to tell the truth. So when someone says that there are people who deny climate change, we should make sure to point this out.
The overwhelming scientific consensus is that humans largely contribute to climate change. However, if you are faced with these 4 outcomes:
1) the scientific community is right & we take the necessary measures to alleviate climate change: it could be expensive in the short run, but we would safely overcome the challenges with minimal climate & environmental disruption, and the overall financial benefits compared to doing nothing are likely to be very positive in the long run.
2) The scientific community is wrong but we take those measures, anyway: it would be expensive, but there’d be many other benefits we’d gain: much less pollution, we’d continue to have a diverse flora & fauna, we’d still have most of our resources, we’d be much healthier, etc.
3) The scientific community is wrong & we don’t take those measures: we’d save some money in the short run, but our resources would be greatly depleted & therefore much more expensive; disputes over water & other resources would likely get steadily more frequent & violent, we’d have pollution of all kinds, our oceans would be dying, there’d be catastrophic extinction of plants & animals (already we’re experiencing one of the greatest mass extinctions in the history of this Earth due mainly to human activities), our overall health would likely decline, etc.
4) The scientific community is right but we do nothing: then even more calamitous extinction; huge displacement of human populations; widespread conflict over our remaining resources, including water; widespread & uncontrollable disease; increasing crop failure; intolerable weather; gigantic destructive storms; possible extinction of the human species.
So what is the best outcome? Actually, it’s #2: scientists are wrong but we take preventive measures. We would’ve put some money upfront, but the side benefits would be well worth it & we wouldn’t’ve had to go through some of the worsening effects of climate change that we feared were impending. #1 would probably be the 2nd best outcome, because although we go through some tough times weathering through some of the effects of climate change that appear sure to come no matter what we do, we will have survived & overcome our greatest world climate threat we’ve ever faced. #3 is next, because although we wouldn’t face the climate challenges (beyond the normal cycles we’ve always faced), we’d still be a much worse place due to widespread pollution, resource depletion, wildlife extinction, etc., which would eventually take us down, anyway, even without being pushed on by climate change. Of course, #4 would be the worst. Conclusion: we must take the (now urgent & dramatic) measures necessary to combat climate change & environmental degradation, whether 97%+ of the scientists are correct, or certain powerful, superwealthy fossil fuel & chemical industries such as Koch, Exxon, Monsanto & Dow are correct. No matter which side is right, taking these measures is clearly the prudent course to take.
Even if these outcomes were considered to have equal possibility (they’re not: the probabilities overwhelmingly favor #1 or #4, depending on our action or inaction), and even if you didn’t care about maintaining animal & plant diversity, a pleasant environment, clean air, clean water, your own personal health & longevity to say nothing about other people’s (because if you were this way, you wouldn’t care about other people), but only about getting rich, any reasonable businessman, in order to insure himself from the worst consequences, which would be so dire that the differences among the other outcomes become trivial, would choose to take appropriate measures to tackle this possible climate change challenge.
We need to spread this information wherever we can. A great place to start is with our youth. They are most at risk, since those who have the most years ahead of them are going to suffer through the worst years of climate change and its ramifications. They also freely use electronic media by which they can spread to their friends & acquaintances. We need to especially contact those in areas where scientific information about climate change is most heavily distorted or concealed, and that certainly includes the American South.
We must put it in terms of morality. This is the highest calling that the world faces. In the past our nation has confronted and rapidly responded to huge challenges, such as the World Wars, the Great Depression, the postwar devastated condition of Europe, & the perceived need for a great expansion of our highway system. What we face today in climate change and how we might respond to them is comparable to all of the above put together. We need to respond urgently & massively as we did then, and we can learn from those experiences and responses. We responded to the Great Depression, which was characterized by mass unemployment & huge wealth inequality, by creating a huge number of jobs to help build our nation’s infrastructure among other things; a much more progressive tax system, with upper rates near 90%; and a system of social & health security. We responded to WWII by converting our automobile companies to churning out machines & vehicles that could be used for the war effort, and citizens engaged in many ways to help the war effort, at home & at work, providing necessary materials & services. After the war, under the Marshall Plan, we helped rebuild Europe, which had been devastated by the war. In the 50’s we built a remarkable network of highways (we had done the same with railroads the previous century). So we should now be able to galvanize our nation, including industry, in a very similar way: conserving, being more energy efficient; avoiding buying & using products harmful to the environment like plastic, toxic chemicals, etc.; converting from fossil fuels to clean energy and from dirty vehicles to cleaner vehicles; expanding light rail & other forms of mass transit the way we did those highways, and put more people into a green economy, which is more labor intensive than the fossil fuel industries, and thus will help with our unemployment problem. We should also be accepting a much more progressive income tax system as well as fees on manufacturing & using substances harmful for the environment, such as a gas tax, carbon tax, meat tax.
We need to compare on a whole list of quality of life values the US with other nations, such as Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand & Singapore, including health care coverage vs. costs, education, longevity, literacy, knowledge about the world, scientific knowledge, happiness, minimum wage, median wage, air quality, murder rate, incarceration rate, tax progressivity, percentage of energy consumption in renewable resources vs. fossil fuels, etc. Note if we can see a high correlation between those last 2 factors with the other qualities of life, which I believe there is, that enhances our position. If there is a measure on degree of socialism vs. capitalism in their systems, that would also be interesting. Does anybody have or know where to find such statistics?
2 of the most effective things any individual can do is to not drive cars (run by fossil fuels) and to not eat meat. Most of us know why not driving is so important, but ceasing to eat meat helps the environment (as well as one’s own personal health) at so many levels: the tremendous amount of food energy (as well as water) spent on feeding domesticated animals – the expenditure of energy is some 10-20 times what it is for grains, vegetables or fruit; the land it takes to suitably keep these animals, the streams that may be polluted by their waste, the native vegetation that may be consumed by them; the large amount of methane gas they produce; the chemicals that are injected into livestock and thus our food system; and the predators that are killed by ranchers & farmers wanting to protect their livestock, with the natural imbalance that results when the top predator of a food chain is eradicated, as well as the poisons that are left in the environment. We should make a list of things people could do in order of impact they might have individually & collectively.
Always give people the benefit of the doubt, & do your best to explain effectively why we need to take measures to alleviate climate change. But if they remain obstinately opposed to this notion against all evidence & reason, don’t be afraid to shame or embarrass them and don’t be reluctant to attribute certain words to either them or to the purveyors of the lies they believe. Republicans for a long time have done this, and it worked for them. They made sure that “socialism” would be connected to communism, and they made “liberal” a dirty word. They called all journalism the “liberal media”, and they stuck with it even as that “media” became steadily more conservative and bought by big corporations. Now the media are demonstrably conservative & pro-corporate, but the right wing continues to call them the “liberal media”. They also typically use very innocuous & beneficial-sounding or patriotic words to name policies they support that often do the opposite of what the titles indicate, especially with bills dealing with conservation & the environment.
Liberals & Democrats are understandably reticent about using such derogatory terms as showing lack of civility and stooping to the conservatives’ & Republicans’ level, but that has put them to a disadvantage in the debates because such terms are often memorable and catch on with the public and stick. But the words need to be basically true or sincere (at least in the mind of the person saying it), and they should fit the entity or circumstance. So words such as “gullible”, “naïve”, “brainwashed”, “manipulated”, “ignorant”, “stupid”, “unreasonable”, “idiots”, “liars”, “self-serving”, “manipulators”, “selfish”, “nutty”, “loony” “greedy”, “dirty”, “immoral”, “hellish”, “hypocritical”, “fascist”… or terms such as “corporate greed”, “corporate media”, “Republican/corporate fascism”, “Tea Party idiots”, “(self-serving/manipulative) Republican/corporate liars”, “lying Republicans/conservatives/capitalists”, “corporate elite”, “corporate stooges” (referring to congressional Republicans & Democrat corporatists), “corporate climate deception”, “greedy corporations”, “capitalist failure”, “ignorant/gullible/brainwashed/idiot(ic) tea-baggers”, “Republican hypocrisy/hypocrits”, “immoral corporate Republican fascists”… Some terms liberals have already used effectively include “Big Oil”, “Big Ag”, “Big Pharma: & other “Big Business” appellations, and “fossil fuels”, which evoke the image of slow, clumsy, outdated, archaic, extinct (or should be): calling them “dirty fossil fuels” or “fossil fuels from Hell”. helps even more. Liberals often use the “mainstream media” derogatorily, but I think it would be more effective to consistently add “corporate” to the phrase – the corporate MSM, because many people under right-wing domination, still equate the MSM with the “liberal media”. “Climate denier” is another favorite pejorative for progressives & environmentalists, but has little or no resonance with many others, so prefixing it with “ignorant”, “idiot(ic)”, “blind”, “unreasonable” or “lying” would help. We also should term sustainable energy sources, such as sun & wind, as “energy from Heaven”, and those from down below, such as coal, oil & gas as “energy from Hell”.
So to sum it up, we need to make it clear that actions to curb carbon emissions would help a whole bunch of other environmental problems as well as improve human health, which is closely correlated with environmental health. We need to stress preventative measures, working with nature, not against it. We should work cooperatively with other groups trying to solve other problems to fight the powers that are screwing us all. We need to consider the future in every policy decision we make as a government & society. We need to spread the scientific information behind climate change to as many people as possible, noting who is getting in the way of action, and reminding people which side has reason to tell the truth, and which side has reason to lie. Make it clear that there is only one reasonable course to take for a better future – drastically lower carbon emissions through conservation, efficiency, switching to clean renewable energy, moving away from driving toward walking, cycling & using mass transit, avoiding plastic, reducing meat consumption, reducing consumption overall, curbing population growth -- whether or not global warming is actually happening, because the benefits of these actions enormously outweigh any detriments. Note which places in the world have converted to a more sustainable way of life, and how positively it has affected their economy as well as way of life. Give people ideas on what they can do personally that can make a substantial positive impact, and urge them to become actively involved in changing their locality, if not the world, to make it a better place to live for all.
Some really good books I recommend: Ozzie Zehner Green Illusions, Bill McKibben Eaarth, Thomas Friedman Hot, Flat & Crowded, and Kathleen Dean Moore Moral Ground. Zehner’s book describes the drawbacks of all energy sources at the present stage, and says we’d be better off putting most of our effort into living more sustainably and making things much more energy efficient, and he is full of great ideas. McKibben describes what kind of planet Earth is transforming into – essentially one quite different from the one we’re used to – and what we can do to mitigate it and survive as comfortably as we can on this new planet. He is also full of ideas, which happen to be almost all different from Zehner’s, but they’re compatible. Friedman describes the many ways in which the short-sighted policies we’ve been taking that exacerbate climate change adversely affect our nation & world in many other ways, that includes feeding inequality, terrorism & petrodictatorships – things usually not brought up in books on climate change. His book is more directed at persuading conservatives and the corporate world of the great advantages of turning into a more sustainable economy. Friedman conflicts some with Zehner in having more faith in our green technology, and he is also full of interesting ideas, again mostly different from those suggested by Zehner or McKibben. Moore’s book is about the moral imperative of our movement to confront climate change & environmental degradation. I have just begun to read it but it looks very inspiring.