The Denial of Climate Change

How could we deem “realistic” a project of modernization that has “forgotten” for two centuries to anticipate the reactions of the terraqueous globe to human actions? How could we accept as “objective” economic theories that are incapable of integrating into their calculations the scarcity of resources whose exhaustion it had been their mission to predict? How could we speak of “effectiveness” with respect to technological systems that have not managed to integrate into their design a way to last more than a few decades? How could we call “rationalist” an ideal of civilization guilty of a forecasting error so massive that it prevents parents from leaving an inhabited world to their children??

Serious questions that require an answer, soon. While there are several pathways, all good options would be transformational. We can’t continue with the status quo, we are literally killing ourselves.?

Bruno Latour argues that the denial of climate change is not a separate phenomenon but rather an integral part of a broader strategy employed by a segment of the ruling class to shield themselves from the consequences of a planet in crisis while exacerbating existing inequalities. This strategy, he suggests, is driven by a realization that the Earth's resources are finite and cannot support the continued expansion of a lifestyle enjoyed by a privileged few. The sources, drawing on excerpts from Latour's Down to Earth, paint a picture of an elite class that has effectively abandoned the project of shared prosperity, choosing instead to secure their own future at the expense of the majority.

What has to change is the mindset, the worldview we embrace. Choose to embrace, because there is indeed free will, we get to choose. Do we have enough adults in the room to see and understand the obvious?