Sobering article. The red flags are there, waving in our faces. The scary part about the science being wrong is that it may have underestimated how quickly the planet will warm. What then?
Yeah...I hate to be the one talking about doomsday, but I don't know how to induce "activating emotions" in people that will lead to action within the small time window that we have before it's too late.
“The Only People Panicking Are the People in Charge” - elite panic means that the people in charge are more interested in the status quo than actually solving problems. "In today’s corporate culture major PR firms promote crisis management as a necessary business expense. Whenever something bad happens to a corporation, often its first move is not to deal with the actual problem, but to manage the negative perception caused by that problem." - from Toxic Sludge is Good for You 2002. And so they manufacture mild. They manufacture doubt. They manufacture consent.
I wonder what is going on these days in the corporate boardrooms when it comes to the climate crisis. And I hope that elites will (for their own self-interested reasons) take action.
We waited over 1600 years from conception to commercial development of the steam engine. I would not wait on the people in the boardrooms for anything your life depends upon. They just have different incentives. Chiefly, maintaining the status quo in which they have power. We've already seen how often they have little concern for systemic risks or even for their own safety. Bank failures and theranos submarines.
Yep! Glad to see David Brooks saying sensible things! The idea of pushing fossil fuels just to upset scientific elites is really bonkers. At least oil companies can do it just based on greed.
Thanks for commenting! I hope that the GOP will change when it comes to the opposition to decarbonization; I don't know who has control within the GOP, though.
Sobering article. The red flags are there, waving in our faces. The scary part about the science being wrong is that it may have underestimated how quickly the planet will warm. What then?
Yeah...I hate to be the one talking about doomsday, but I don't know how to induce "activating emotions" in people that will lead to action within the small time window that we have before it's too late.
“The Only People Panicking Are the People in Charge” - elite panic means that the people in charge are more interested in the status quo than actually solving problems. "In today’s corporate culture major PR firms promote crisis management as a necessary business expense. Whenever something bad happens to a corporation, often its first move is not to deal with the actual problem, but to manage the negative perception caused by that problem." - from Toxic Sludge is Good for You 2002. And so they manufacture mild. They manufacture doubt. They manufacture consent.
I wonder what is going on these days in the corporate boardrooms when it comes to the climate crisis. And I hope that elites will (for their own self-interested reasons) take action.
We waited over 1600 years from conception to commercial development of the steam engine. I would not wait on the people in the boardrooms for anything your life depends upon. They just have different incentives. Chiefly, maintaining the status quo in which they have power. We've already seen how often they have little concern for systemic risks or even for their own safety. Bank failures and theranos submarines.
I personally expect no "ah-ha moment" from the so-called movers and shakers.
Yep! Glad to see David Brooks saying sensible things! The idea of pushing fossil fuels just to upset scientific elites is really bonkers. At least oil companies can do it just based on greed.
Thanks for commenting! I hope that the GOP will change when it comes to the opposition to decarbonization; I don't know who has control within the GOP, though.