Climate change is a difficult topic to get a revolution behind. At least one with political power and financial backing. Those who are actually willing to recognize global warming as more than a myth tend to understand how dire the situation is, which is obviously disheartening. To keep their land afloat, island nations have launched political and social revolutions to change the global standard of temperature increase from two degrees Celsius to one degree to keep their land afloat. That type of bargaining, when our current trajectory is six degrees higher than the proposed standard, seems useless and pathetic. It's difficult not to be discouraged by these facts.
From celebrated author and activist, Naomi Klein’s "This Changes Everything" is an interesting take on why the climate change movement is having such a hard time gaining the necessary footing in the U.S. Ecology and economy are intrinsically linked, and this fact is as unavoidable as it is frustrating. When money is in jeopardy, corporations and big businesses will stop at nothing to destroy the catalyst. To conservatives, the aspiration to financially progress is literally a way of life. This observation is nothing new. Yes, conservatives are concerned with money and profitable resources, and yes, the fact that they refuse to look at resource deposits in the long term is both frustrating and laughable.
A more interesting take Klein introduces, however, is the notion that the green movement advocates for individualistic changes that will seemingly violate what they consider their "American values." It makes a lot of sense for these people to feel victimized by the growing number of people who they feel have diverged from this value system. When you are taught to glorify a certain "American SUV" type of lifestyle, it's easier to denounce the Hybrid than it is to denounce your entire way of life. For a lot of people, the necessary measures we as a global community have decided upon undermine these values.
Maybe it is regressive to fear divergence from tradition the way conservatives fear it, and maybe it is foolish to think that we can put a tangible price on our very limited resources, but asking people to completely change their beliefs because their opinions are deemed "regressive" is where the type of resentment that fuels denial. Klein takes a very sardonic stance when portraying climate change skeptics, rightfully so, but such an attitude seems to hurt the movement as well. It fosters hate and unnecessary "othering." If climate change proponents proposed something that violated “progressive” ideology, liberals would have the same type of visceral reaction.
Klein represents conservatives as ignorant and incompetent, which says just as much about the liberal superiority complex as it does as about conservative stupidity. What allows liberals to be the progressives in the perspective of the green movement is a difference in ideology. This manufactured (and growing) dichotomy of liberal vs. conservative perpetuates the increasingly toxic relationship between the two. Yet cordial relations are necessary to finding a consensus that could save us.
So, yes, in terms of life and death, maybe money shouldn't be as important as conservatives seem to believe, but the holier-than-thou attitude of liberals across the country is both unnecessary and unproductive. Such publications laud arguably true but interpreted information about the far right it wishes to belittle. I think it's important as a proponent of the climate change movement to consume information with the understanding that nothing is written without bias so as not to foster the type of resentment between the two constructed ideologies, which are now so polar that the very mention of one to the other elicits violent reactions. This type of attitude is not conducive to progress.
This being said, climate change deniers are portrayed as ignorant and, plainly, stupid because denying something proven based on stable fact is just that. As difficult as it is to accept, we will eventually be faced with a tangible crisis so great, even skeptics will realign their beliefs. In the meantime, all we can really do is sit, wait, and advocate for both political and individual change (which will probably be blocked or counteracted by skeptics anyway).
McKibben's "Global Warming's Terrifying New Math" presents current carbon emission trends as something too imposing to reverse. Even the most environmentally progressive countries continue to release carbon emissions. A decrease doesn't mean an end to the problem; rather, it's another tactic to push back the inevitable demise of Earth as we know it. According to the numbers, our reliance on carbon-based energy has already sealed our fate, yet world powers, too busy with crunching economic numbers, hardly seem to notice. At this point, the concept of "living green" seems like worthless cause when countries make ecological deals based on profit.
McKibben explains that being individually eco-friendly means basically nothing when whole countries refuse to (and genuinely can't) completely halt consumption of carbon based energy. It's so utterly frustrating that, for the sake of preserving (and progressing) our economy, there are millions of Americans who are unwilling to accept the legitimacy of global warming. I have spoken to so many people who can't wait to get rich through the oil industry. The number of people who believe climate change is a hoax created by liberals to stifle economic profit is ungodly. And regardless of compliance, carbon cuts don't reduce damage, but merely slow the rate of the increase. McKibben goes into detail here, explaining that 80 percent of the fuel already owned by international oil companies needs to remain unused in order to sustain life on Earth.
How do you incentive a company to not sell their resources when what they could sell is far more profitable than any incentive the global economy could provide? The real question is, why are these cash cow corporations allowed to exist with absolutely no moral backbone? Why are they allowed to continue to guzzle up resources, create waste, and sell it back to us for so much profit? More directly, where do these people expect to spend their billions after the Earth is entirely destroyed? It's an incredibly frustrating paradox. We run ourselves into bankruptcy so we can live comfortably...but the comfort has to eventually end. Essentially, sustainable life on Earth is very, very dated, and, in general terms, we're not doing anything about it.
In a burst of curiosity, I entered my lifestyle habits into an online Global Footprint Calculator. I learned that it would take 4.5 Earths to sustain a globe full of my (carbon) spending habits. It takes 20 acres of arable land to sustain me, who provides the Earth virtually nothing in return. That's bleak. The relationship between comfort and carbon is bleak. The intersection between what we, as Americans, believe to be the bare minimum and the amount of carbon spent to maintain that "bare minimum" lifestyle is horribly bleak. We expect so much comfort in life that true, global change will be difficult to conjure. This all being said, that definitely doesn't mean that I think "eco-friendly" living is pointless... (Well, maybe it is, but we can't just throw any inhibitions out the door because "the Earth is doomed anyway.")
At this point, our conservation efforts are like arguing semantics. We will eventually run out. We will eventually die out. That's all set in stone. It's just exactly when we'll die that's up for discussion. (And people still don't think it's real.)
Despite all this, good news does still exist. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that 2014 was the first year our global economy grew without increasing carbon emissions. That news is monumental, and it should change the way we see climate change. Even with this good news, though, climatologists insist that Earth is doomed anyway, but these advances both in technology and in global politics will slow the evolutionary clock down to a reasonable pace. He frames our mistakes as un-erasable, but also as something we can stop contributing to. With globally shifting attitudes, absolute meltdown now appears to be pushing farther and farther down our evolutionary timeline. So it’s time for compromise. It’s time for teamwork. We won’t be able to avoid global demise forever, but we can try to push it farther into the future. This isn’t a job just for liberals, however. In order to make impactful progress, we have to be united. Liberals must do away with elitism and conservatives must cast aside their skepticism. After all, the Earth is for everyone, not just the people we agree with.
