Pollution is the Problem
While the current ecological and environmental focus is all about climate change, I feel strongly that this is a distraction, a diversion from the real problem. Climate change happens naturally. The climate has been changing for all of earth’s history. There are many different epochs of climate reality that existed throughout geologic time. Humans are part of nature. The climate will change, no matter what we do, and we should probably accept that at some level, just as we accept the fact that the tides rise and fall. It might be time to recognize that large investments in waterside properties isn’t very wise. It is also prudent to develop strategies for adaptation that are equitable and sustainable.
We should also accept that as part of Nature we can affect the environment with our activities. Humans have been doing so for all of our species existence. Humans have been burning prairies and clearing forests, transporting seeds and animals across geographic boundaries they never would have crossed, and taking matter that was in the ground and dispersing it into the air for millennia . This global PR campaign urging us to fight climate change permeating our culture and even across cultures, around the planet, is focusing our attention on an aspect of the problem, while obscuring the true culprit, our unchecked consumption with no regard to where the waste ends up.
Climate change is just a symptom. We need to move beyond the symptom to the cause, which is pollution – of every kind. Matter out of place, as they say on the playa, is THE problem, whether that be carbon in the air or plastic in the sea (another long chain carbon product).
Climate change as a problem is just wrong thinking, as I see it. It’s like complaining about the weather. There is no bad weather, just inappropriate clothing. Humans are adaptable and that is our genius, it is also our weakness. Our adaptability requires a sense of conformity, a need to feel part of the herd. It is that tendency that allows US to be manipulated through the science and techniques of what is known as Public Relations.
The Public Relation campaign permeated through all media channels for preventing or fighting Climate Change is based on facts that should concern us and has, for the most part, commendable goals of reduced fossil fuel waste. (Burning a finite resource that can be used to make so much material stuff is stealing that resource from our progeny. At least plastics have some possibilities for recycling. Once fuel is burned those long carbon chains are broken forever).
But reducing our dependence on fossil fuels while increasing our use of rare earth minerals and continuing on the path of mass consumption with little to no regard for the waste created will only hasten the existential crisis of a decimated environment and collapsed ecologies. Never mind the ongoing devastation created by the greatest generator of pollution humans engage in, modern warfare. It is modern warfare that will be used to secure those new resources.
This all appears to me to be an oligarchical shell game. A social
manipulation of the highest order, to shift the economic focus for a few generations to a new set of markets and infrastructure of centralized control. The economic incentives for doing so are enormous. By concentrating the focus of environmental awareness on Climate Change, the ongoing game of commodification of everything can continue, with the populations happily playing along, doing our jobs, buying our cars and living increasingly in our personal technological bubbles.
The economic incentive – ie the potential for concentrated profit and exploitation is limited with a more self sufficient and healthy population living in community, as humans always have. The wealth of the nation becomes more distributed to the many local and sustainable sources of public utilities and services. For this reason alone, it is not in the media conglomerates or their owners interest to create this kind of awareness and concern.In fact their motivation is quite the opposite, and we can see how effectively they are dismantling any faith in reason and even Democracy.
Public resources are free and shared resources. Natural resources should be recognized as public property. Freedom hasn’t been increasing in these United States. In fact everything is costing more, and less and less is available for “free.” By accepting the notion of Socialism as working and providing for the public good, maybe we can adapt to a more longitudinal perspective that seriously considers the needs and possibilities we are creating and leaving for future generations. This awareness and the actions they inspire must come from US, from the people, because the “owners” will lose profit and power as it shifts back to where it belongs – with the people.
We are living in the future’s past.