In the midst of what is becoming the hottest year on record, what remained of an already compromised address to climate change was stripped from the Obama administration's energy bill. The climate legislation could not pass intact because the administration was not willing to fight for it in the smirking face of climate change deniers, deregulators, and politicians in the pocket of polluters. The will to act for tomorrow, even as the warming daylight breaks our collective sleep, is more fragile than the sheen of atmosphere wisping over this small rock in space. Politicians it seems fear the deniers, fear that they may be accused of foresight in the face of the blind march of corporatism as if allegiance to its ideology trumps all else in its wake. So they make a devil's bargain while the planet cooks and pundits rook. If this administration is incapable of fueling change instead of carbon tycoons, can we ever again hope that climate change will be addressed before the inevitable?
Look closely. The remarkable thing about climate change deniers is their nearly exact parallel with young Earth creationists. (Creationism on the Square in Madison, WI) They aren't interested in reality because they are invested in a false narrative that structures not only their thinking but their view of order in the world. They've forced themselves into rejecting the entire weight of scientific evidence and instead have to fit the facts to feed their beliefs (i.e. they either make shit up, take it out of context, or use sarcasm as an argument). Anything that contradicts their internal narrative threatens everything within their worldview, and it would seem to crumble about them if any piece of it were to be proved incorrect. Climate change cannot be admitted not because it isn't happening but because to admit it threatens their entire edifice of consumption as freedom and greed as virtue. If climate change is happening, their whole myth might be wrong.
For most climate change deniers, the false narrative involves an immature economic philosophy that says virtue lies in the one who says f*** everyone and everything on the planet, I'm going to do whatever the hell I want to do. Trees get in the way. Whales get in the way. People who defend either become objects of their derision -- how dare anyone get in the way of the great F.U. These are people who bray about taking initiative and personal responsibility instead of a "handout," but who reject responsibility for the consequences of their actions beyond the localized sphere of their castle. It's a grotesque self-contradiction that is lost on them.
Often but not always, climate change deniers are also end-timers. It fits snugly within the larger false narrative of Armageddon and retribution to non-believers by ultimate authority. The biggest F.U. of them all. But this is a problem because it is also reveals the death wish waiting at the end of their insistent destruction of the planet. "You" are going to get payback for denying them the flourishing of their narrative, for standing in the way, for perceived ridicule of their stupidity. The problem is that they are actually making their death wish a reality, not just for themselves, but for everyone because they constantly stand in the way of response both in their personal actions and by mucking up political will.
The latest evidence is that we are challenging the hottest year in recorded history despite a solar minimum. (2010 to Be One of Hottest Years on Record) That should not happen. There is no arguing around it. An el Nino event will contribute to a miserably hot summer - but at a solar minimum, it cannot produce the hottest year on record. That should not happen -- unless we are running headlong over a cliff of stupidity. We're not just being tapped on the shoulder. We're being hit with a flame-thrower. It is also not an anomaly. It is a continual incline in temperature, a continual decrease in Arctic ice, a continual rise in the oceans. Trying telling that to a climate change denier. They won't address the facts; they'll just refudiate it with junk science and insults.
I often write about human analogical thought, about how it structures us for narratives. Well, there are two sides to that narrative ability. We can become functionally trapped in a false internal narrative structured in a belief system about what the world is and how we fit within it. Action in this sense is prescribed to fit into the narrative's mechanism and cannot respond to information outside its ken of belief. Like a young Earth creationist, elaborate denials are required. For creationists, knights slay T. Rexes. For climate change deniers, CO2 levels are meaningless and the glaciers aren't melting. That is a static narrative.
Or we can use analogical thought to understand facts that are contrary to what we wish, to perceive from them a future narrative (otherwise known as "a threat"), and respond to it. That is how humans survive. That is a dynamic narrative.
It is the static narrative that won in Congress last week, the death wish. June 2010 was the hottest June ever recorded on Earth. (June 2010 Earth’s hottest month on record) It turns out that there's more things oppressing besides the heat, and unless we beat them, we will never beat the heat. Welcome to Death Wish 2010.