The greatest obstacle to combatting climate change will be our own complacency
As severe climatic and weather changes have started to assault parts of the U.S. where the residents’ prior experience was limited to gaping at televised images beamed from where they thankfully didn’t reside, several well-intended expressions of dismay and urgency have been surfacing. That alarm has been reflected both here on Daily Kos and in the U.S. media as a whole. One relatively consistent theme of these pieces has been to decry those who seem to have retreated into despair and even nihilism about what can or will be done to reverse what by all appearances is an existential crisis—one facing not only this country, but the entirety of the human race.
That’s because the capitulation to “doomerism,” although understandable as a human response to the magnitude of the crisis, does nothing to change the status quo, let alone advance the ball toward positive action. But “doomerism”—a mostly passive acknowledgement of feelings of relative or complete paralysis in the face of a seemingly insurmountable, daunting challenge—is actually something worse than ineffective, because it provides sustenance to the greatest problem we face in addressing climate change.
That problem isn’t climate denialism. It isn’t the Republican Party. It isn’t even the fossil fuel industry that created, aggravated, and then denied the reality of this crisis. Those are all root causes and contributors to the catastrophe, obviously, but the biggest challenge we face at this point is the resignation, acceptance, and worst of all, complacency by a shell-shocked, helpless, and overwhelmed public. Because now the real portent of multiple and severe climatic crises has become practically impossible for us meager and limited humans to assimilate. A substantial majority of Americans accept the reality of man-made climate change and consider it a “major threat.” They just don’t know what to do about it.
RELATED STORY: It’s the hottest month ever recorded, but all Republicans can do is blow hot air