Yes, We Should Prepare for Climate Change Like We Plan for War, But How Likely Is That?
Here’s an article that suggests an alternative approach to dealing with climate change, as suggested in the headline above. That sounds like a solid idea, until one considers a few points:
War is an American staple, like sugar and salt in our kitchens. We are a warlike nation; in fact, some argue that it’s the only thing at which we excel.
War is good business. As Eisenhower warned when he left office in 1961, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.” It was as if he could see 57 years into the future, where we live in a world without the vaguest hope for a cessation to our wars, driven principally by the United States, a country that spends more (in absolute numbers) on its military than the next eight nations combined.
Mitigating climate change does not benefit the U.S. economically, at least at this point. To the contrary, our oil companies and power utilities are free to use our waterways and skies as open cesspools; they profit enormously from the free pass that they receive from our society, in which it is we citizens, not the offending vested interests, who absorb the cost of the damage to the health of our bodies and the environment at large.
As a political issue, it’s easy to infuriate and terrify a largely ignorant public as to the threat posed to them, like “insane” foreign governments, “hoards of rapacious” immigrants, etc. Yet international polls consistently show that, by a huge margin, the people of Earth believe that the biggest threat to world peace is the United States; no other response to these survey questions comes anywhere close.
Conversely, climate change is the subject of vast disinformation campaigns that seek to cast doubt on climate science and the theory of anthropogenic global warming (see a few of these 673,000 articles). No surprise, these are funded by the moneyed interests that seek to profit from our business as usual approach to environmental responsibility. As such, climate change is a very low priority, if it is of any concern to the common American at all.
People who honestly care about the future of this civilization would absolutely love to see an aggressive attack on climate change, but how practical is that, given the political and economic realities of the day? The difference between the things that motivate us versus those that make us yawn is easy to predict–just follow the money.
Craig,
(Sigh) Why do you persist with continually undermining environmental support ?
You’d think the biggest lesson of the past decade for those who care about environmental progress, is the error of combining leftist ideology and environmentalism. The confusion created inevitably alienates the majority of the populace.
The US is not the “great war monger” ! It’s true that having saved the Western world for totalitarianism in WW2 and Korea, in the later half of the twentieth century the US did make some well-intentioned but ill conceived foreign policy mistakes and misunderstandings. Mostly these mistakes occurred because the US was still learning it’s new found status as the world’s greatest super power.
On the balance the US has behaved with restraint against viscous and brutal enemies. Regrettably, on many occasions it backed corrupt regimes simply because the weren’t communist and intervened in civil wars without any real understanding of the ancient (and often incomprehensible) local hatreds.
What’s frightening, is the way the left is embracing and advocating totalitarian coercion because the public continues to reject socialism disguised as environmentalist activism.
35 years ago the left fought bitter battles in the UK to keep the coal industry alive, today, the same leftists are calling for it’s closure, but make no apology to the Thatcher government. 15 years ago leftist greens were shouting about the end of the world due to peak oil, when that failed to materialize, anti-fracking was the next campaign to save the planet, now the same leftists are demanding more natural gas production.
10 years ago, ardent and distinguished “climate scientists” confidently predicted that by 2020 many small island nation would be underwater. This “incontrovertible truth” hasn’t occurred. In fact island nations are mostly increasing in size !
The general public is very supportive of sensible, practical clean technology, especially in energy generation. What they don’t want is political ideology and leftist dogma foisted on them by extremist “green’ advocates.
Just shouting louder, “Hooray for my side !”, while never admitting or explaining errors and continuing with a never-ending chain of failed predictions, is counter productive.
Yesterday, I helped sell and finance a number of really big, fully electric lawn mowers for golf resorts. This is the biggest single order we’ve sold in nearly 20 years of my involvement with specialty EV’s. The saving to the environment by these machines, which are powered by solar installations and flow battery storage, is small in the over all scheme of environmental progress, but is nonetheless significant.
The sale of these machines also enhances the reputation of EV technology, and promotes adoption. They provide an example to a huge number of people (and influential people) the value and practicality of EV technology.
The environment doesn’t care about the politics, but a local “Green party” politician expressed his disapproval of the sale . In his opinion, golf courses should be abolished as they’re symbols of wealth, (untrue, since at least one course was owned and operated by a municipality)and immediately replaced by “native” plant reserves.
It’s this kind of nonsense which has seen environmental support decline.