I wrote two posts on climate change today and I spiked both of them. There's a creeping sense of futility to these things. Politics prevails over science, again and again. Science has numbers. Politicians have their own numbers, political numbers. The existential threat does not have priority. It barely holds their attention. It's just too hard. Why squander that much political capital when it won't pay for itself in a world of 4-year electoral cycles?
You and I and others are left to watch from the sidelines. At times dismayed, other times angered, yet others horrified.
I find myself running out of steam these days, Mound, precisely for the reasons you cite here. More and more, I have been referring, in conversation, to "the gift of mortality." It seems the only way to escape the madness that prevails today.
I wrote two posts on climate change today and I spiked both of them. There's a creeping sense of futility to these things. Politics prevails over science, again and again. Science has numbers. Politicians have their own numbers, political numbers. The existential threat does not have priority. It barely holds their attention. It's just too hard. Why squander that much political capital when it won't pay for itself in a world of 4-year electoral cycles?
ReplyDeleteYou and I and others are left to watch from the sidelines. At times dismayed, other times angered, yet others horrified.
I find myself running out of steam these days, Mound, precisely for the reasons you cite here. More and more, I have been referring, in conversation, to "the gift of mortality." It seems the only way to escape the madness that prevails today.
DeleteWe're living in an absurd world, Lorne. We can see the solution. But we can't summon the gumption to implement it.
ReplyDeleteIt may indeed be our fatal flaw, Owen.
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