It is true that despair is a dangerous thing. It can paralyse people into inaction. But talking to many people that isn't the feeling I get. They aren't despairing. It is more that they simply don't want to know. They understand, in the back of their minds, that there is a problem, but if they have to do anything about it then is has to be somebody else's problem.
Some of us do alter our actions. But if we all made relatively small changes to our lives (driving only when absolutely necessary, putting warm clothes on instead of the heater, and so on) we could make a genuine difference. Then, later on, encouraged by those successes we could tackle some of the more important ones. But we aren't even getting started. Our politicians are dragging their feet and many people are gladly deceiving themselves that there is a climate change debate. The only "debate" is one fabricated by the fuel companies.
What is worse, there seem to be surprisingly large numbers of people who say "Climate warming? Bring it on! Longer growing seasons, more warm days at the beach. I like it." They haven't given thought to the tropical diseases now invading temperate regions, or the loss of all the major residential and industrial areas when waters rise, or, even worse, the very real possibility of the warming triggering a new ice age.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2009-04-11 09:51 am (UTC)Some of us do alter our actions. But if we all made relatively small changes to our lives (driving only when absolutely necessary, putting warm clothes on instead of the heater, and so on) we could make a genuine difference. Then, later on, encouraged by those successes we could tackle some of the more important ones. But we aren't even getting started. Our politicians are dragging their feet and many people are gladly deceiving themselves that there is a climate change debate. The only "debate" is one fabricated by the fuel companies.
What is worse, there seem to be surprisingly large numbers of people who say "Climate warming? Bring it on! Longer growing seasons, more warm days at the beach. I like it." They haven't given thought to the tropical diseases now invading temperate regions, or the loss of all the major residential and industrial areas when waters rise, or, even worse, the very real possibility of the warming triggering a new ice age.