WHY I BELIEVE IN CLIMATE CHANGE

The fact that something so having to do with science has become such a political issue is not only surprising but significant. We live in a world where the issues proven or debunked by scientific investigation — rationally and patiently proven through an objective set of criteria and methodology — are generally accepted with some degree of Gospel-like adherence. The debate as to right and wrong, true or false, yes or no and what we should finally believe, is generally confined to the realm of professional science. If and when an issue is resolved within this community is almost always what the rest of us take our cues from. This does not mean science is always correct, but what makes professional science the most reliable oracle of truth is its ability to admit its mistakes. It understands the road to truth is pot holed with mistakes and is constantly trying to not just break new ground but to rectify and renew old “truths” that could be leading us astray. Like any other human endeavor, some element of ego might cloud an investigator’s assumptions, but ego gratification in professional science overwhelmingly rests on getting it right. That is why we laymen almost always trust it.

The issue of climate change is one where an almost unanimous scientific voice exists. Those specialized in this branch of study are telling us human practice is having an effect on the climate. They are telling us this is not just a normal cyclical change — ice ages and such — but something being accelerated dangerously by the modus operandi of people and their cultural habits.

So why aren’t we listening? Why has this become such a divisive political issue? We usually respect professional science. Why is there so much push back from laymen on this issue?

Perhaps you already know or at least have a subtle feel for the answer, but Post Consumer Man still feels the need to lay it out clearly, to codify it so any ambiguity or confusion in explaining it can be erased.

The reason why so many of us are not listening; the reason this has become such a partisan political battle, is that not only are financial interests in play, but the biggest, most omnipotent financial interests profiting from the consumer society and the economic system that drives it. Post Consumer Man would go even further, postulating that acceptance of climate change not only threatens the most lucrative financial interests in the global economy, but threatens a whole way of life’s economic concept. We know these huge financial interests will continue to belittle climate change theory to protect their self interest, but I ask you, the good reader, are you willing to change your habits — to “need” less clothes, gadgets, new cars, titanium-moon rock clubs and tennis racquets and the latest in this and that — if such becomes necessary in staving off ecological disaster? At this moment I’d say we have a hung jury on that one.

When I say climate change threatens certain financial interests or a way of life itself, I’m not referring to the actual physical damage it could provoke in the nebulous future. If we ever get to such an unfortunate cataclysmic moment, the debate is over and all practitioners in the global economy — winners, losers and everything in between — become losers. Any attempts to avoid this moment threaten the machinations of the global economic system. If we translate this into its most distilled, purest sense, we are talking about FOSSIL FUELS and its role in our whole way of defining what we want from our lives.

Professional science is telling us that fossil fuels are the most direct catalyst of climate change (factory farm meat production and the waste it produces is also a significant contributor, but we will simply put it on the record here and move on). The consumer society demands an enormous amount of fuel to quench the thirst of its production mechanisms, in fact, the organism is always thirsty and begging for more. As the consumer beast has evolved over the last century or so, fossil fuel — coal, oil, natural gas — has become the only source of energy that can be harnessed and is plentiful enough to be used in a way that accommodates the consumer society and the economic system it operates under. Forget dollars, euros, yens and other such drachma-shekel caricatures of the same thing, the true currency of the global economy is oil. It underpins everything that happens with regard to production, delivery, marketing and any other factor which governs the economic system and the behavior of those living under its hegemony. For those most profiting from this system, oil is the food that feeds their ATM’s and they do not want any indigestion or poor nutrition to interfere in the process. This is what works for them. This is what has made them the lords of the Earth, and they’ll be damned if some egghead scientist, prognosticating some vague notions of Nostradamus-like apocalypse, is going to get them out of their corporate box at Yankee Stadium.

What do I know about climate change? Whether I agree or disagree with you on this issue, I’d say I know about the same as you do. In other words, almost all of us know nothing about climate change. Let’s be honest with ourselves — if nobody was telling us the Earth was getting warmer, or whatever they are telling us, almost none of us would be thinking about it. (Now that it has been brought to my attention, there is a tendency to see evidence of climate change, but the objectivity of such a conclusion is open to doubt). The question for almost all of us, in our laymen ignorance, is not what we know about climate change, or what we can see of it, or whatever we can conjure up on our own, but who we use to educate us and for what reasons.

Who do you believe? Who has the most to lose by phasing out fossil fuels as our primary energy source? Whose opinion would seem to be the most affected by personal, selfish interest? Is it the professional science community warning us of this problem, or the Koch brothers and other masters of the most lucrative business on the planet, fossil fuels? But it is misleading to simply point to the fossil fuel industry. They are the most directly affected, but not by much. All of the most lascivious corporate and financial moguls of the world’s current economic system are in bed with fossil fuel. It is perhaps the most fundamental aspect of what makes their system function. It is the lynch pin for the creation of their wealth.

When you compare this against whatever special interest a scientist might have in telling us our excessive use of fossil fuel is becoming dangerous (cue the song from the film Ghostbusters), who ya’ gonna trust? Even if the professional science community gets it wrong, at least I know its motives are pure (yeah, yeah, I know, there have been scandals in scientific practice, but in general, science is still science). Perhaps the most telling evidence of just how foolish this “debate” has become in America is that it has become a purely partisan political issue. When is the last time science — real science — has been denied by a complete sector of politicians?

Regardless of your cynicism with regard to America’s 2 political parties, it is the Republicans that have been hired to do the bidding of the world’s most tyrannical financial powers. They are funded by them, answer to them, are their employees. They are climate deniers because that is what their masters expect of them. Who ya’ gonna trust — these laymen politicians, many of whom believe a Creator included fossil fuel in the package when inventing the planet just seven thousand years ago, — or professional science?

One might ask how people like the Koch brothers, who are not ignorant, intellectually deficient people, could ignore the overwhelming scientific consensus on this subject. What good would their wealth be in a world ravaged by what climate change could produce? Surely they understand that.

The problem is that none of this, as of yet, is obvious. Climate change is something like nicotine addiction — its effects develop so slowly and subtly one tends to ignore it until it is too late. When one has a vested interest in something it is easy to delude oneself into maintaining that vested interest. In a sense, anyone participating in the consumer society has a vested interest in fossil fuel, not just financially, but emotionally as well. It has become an addiction. It has become a habit. “Going shopping” has now become much more a recreational activity than a necessity. If climate change does bring us down, no one is innocent.

I know who I believe, and even if they get it wrong I’ll go on believing them over a bunch of politicians and businessmen. Think of the great irony here: politicians are amongst the most reviled, least trusted elements of our society and yet, in this case, somewhere around ½ the country is trusting them more than professional scientists. Try explaining that!

OK, I’ll try — it means greed and propaganda are stronger than science, and you can apply that principle to common sense health care reform, gun control, on and on —

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I began writing essays in the early 90’s, the collection “Because You Never Asked” being a fractional but representative cross section of an output that is still in progress today. I restrict their content to anything that may be relevant since the dawn of time to the end of eternity. They’ve given me a kind of therapeutical way to voice my objections to the paradigm of our culture and the negativity it is leading us into. All cultures attempt to inculcate their constituents into someone’s narrow minded, self serving version of reality and this book is an attempt to translate these subterfuges into the truth. Although a number of my earliest essays are included in this collection, the vast majority of them are more contemporary. Regardless of their chronology, they should all still be pertinent to whatever is happening at this moment.

To order you copy of “Because You Never Asked” by Jerome Grapel click here.