While water and fire descend over more and more places in the world and torment society, the climate movement is holding itself hostage in a paralyzing division. You may well draw that dramatic conclusion if you follow the discussions among all those climate experts who know so much better than their fellows.
To get the taste, read some discussions that took place recently about nuclear power and ecomodernism.
What one person sees as the solution to the problem is denounced by others as precisely part – or even the cause – of that problem. Of course, by holding an opinion myself, I realize that in doing so I am guilty of the curse I am condemning here as well. As Kermit the Frog once put it, “It’s not easy being green.”
But still.
Another example from The Guardian: proponents of regenerative agriculture are dismissed as naive nitwits by climate guru George Monbiot, himself to be found with great regularity in that same newspaper, because they want to graze cows naturally, and those animals do not provide zero emissions.
Or discussions about degrowth, in which participants who claim to be climate defenders, take such extreme and mutually contested positions that they explode the core of their argument as if hit by a little fragmentation bomb.
The fiercer the debate becomes, the more extreme the positions. When something is not entirely perfect it’s deemed absolutely wrong. Is it any wonder that the general public turns away from those debates and plunges into even deeper and more self-destructive hedonism?
While the climate mavens are constructing Babylonian skyscrapers, the titans in their fossil castles are united in ensuring that the rest of humanity continues to gorge itself, to stinkingly fly around the globe, and that they can load up toward Black Friday with planet-destroying trinkets for little.
The solution is as simple as it is impossible: a climate movement that speaks one message with one voice, and acts on it. That message too is as simple as impossible: all throttle down, now.
By doing so, they fill the pockets of the puppet masters even further, so those can buy the entire political establishment to give themselves carte blanche for blowing up the planet into fragments that even the Hubble telescope can no longer detect. Aided by AI and “social” media, the shadow princes meanwhile also make sure that this sedated part of humanity hears, sees, and believes mainly what they already were thinking. Insofar as any thinking is going on there. Whoever may have any doubts left is clubbed with the argument that helping to save the climate only contributes to greater poverty and Verelendung.
Most frustrating of all is that all those bickering and chattering climate tycoons talk about urgency – it all has to be solved NOW or there’s no need for it anymore – while their squabbling actually delays action even further, de facto killing their license to exist. Meanwhile, the fossil vassals are laughing their heads off.
The solution is as simple as it is impossible: a climate movement that speaks one message with one voice, and acts on it. That message is also as simple as impossible: to instantly take a step back, and do a little less of everything. We can start today, it costs nothing and saves a lot. But then again, and here all do agree, that’s not what we want.
So we go on fighting water and fire. More and more water and more and more fire. Until everything is drowned and scorched.
Peet Osta
