Is a heat wave literally burning the giant piles of lobbyist money that they get to pretend climate change isn’t happening, along with their children? No.
Here’s what politicians do, because it’s what they’ve been paid to do:
But the government quickly began to back down after a meeting in June with officials in the oil-rich province of Alberta…
The task for the government is to make it appear that as much progress as possible is being made (to appease the fifth of Canadians too worried to have children) while causing as few political problems as possible with the industry.
…politicians want to be seen doing a lot about climate change, but not so much that it lands them in any kind of real trouble with the industry.
Finally, this:
But this moment feels as if it calls for something larger—comparable to the Earth Day demonstrations of a half century ago, which brought ten per cent of the American population into the streets. It’s eruptions on that scale that change the political reality.
The only way to get them to do something meaningful is to have enough constituents screaming in their faces to do something or get replaced by someone who will. If you’re not screaming at the people who represent you in government to make real change (including restricting fossil fuel companies), then you’re wasting your time doing anything else to “fight” climate change.
Also, because I have more to complain about, I see we’re still doing headlines that comply with Betteridge’s law.
Also, a sizeable percentage of the population simply doesn’t either believe in or care about climate change, partially due to active disinformation campaigns by eg. oil companies, and partially just due to being - in a word - idiots.
It’s now looking probable that we’ll go over the mythical 1.5C limit in the next year or two. This will most probably lead to absolutely no action, except maybe some speeches about how “we care about then environment” and some new carbon compensation schemes that’ll ultimately do nothing except raise prices even more. It’s become clear that nothing will be actually done until it’s far too late if even then, there’s far too much money and power dependent on the status quo. I’ll be surprised if mass scale industrial society lasts a further 100 years
Is a heat wave literally burning the giant piles of lobbyist money that they get to pretend climate change isn’t happening, along with their children? No.
Here’s what politicians do, because it’s what they’ve been paid to do:
Finally, this:
The only way to get them to do something meaningful is to have enough constituents screaming in their faces to do something or get replaced by someone who will. If you’re not screaming at the people who represent you in government to make real change (including restricting fossil fuel companies), then you’re wasting your time doing anything else to “fight” climate change.
Also, because I have more to complain about, I see we’re still doing headlines that comply with Betteridge’s law.
Also, a sizeable percentage of the population simply doesn’t either believe in or care about climate change, partially due to active disinformation campaigns by eg. oil companies, and partially just due to being - in a word - idiots.
It’s now looking probable that we’ll go over the mythical 1.5C limit in the next year or two. This will most probably lead to absolutely no action, except maybe some speeches about how “we care about then environment” and some new carbon compensation schemes that’ll ultimately do nothing except raise prices even more. It’s become clear that nothing will be actually done until it’s far too late if even then, there’s far too much money and power dependent on the status quo. I’ll be surprised if mass scale industrial society lasts a further 100 years