American Psychosis - We’ve got to confront our collective denial concerning climate change

[BridgeTheGap]

I recently concluded that whether you drink like Charles Bukowski in his prime or are as sober as a Mormon, you should spend at least two months attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Not only because practicing AA’s 12-step program will dispel any notions that the world can or should revolve around your daily plight—but also because the future of the planet may well depend on whether or not a majority of us can wrap our brains around the central precept of step one: that our lives have become unmanageable.

It is not an easy thing, this act of relentless honestly. Just consider the trajectory of the “debate” over climate change science, which the popular media irresponsibly legitimize (see “Hot Air” on p. 58). According to 2009 data analyzed at The Green Grok, a blog hosted by Bill Chameides, dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, a majority of Americans still believe that climate change is occurring. But that number is down between 8 and 15 percent from 2008, depending on which polls you read.

In a recent Gallup survey, 48 percent of Americans said the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated, compared to 41 percent a year ago. Most tellingly, George Mason and Yale universities found that 41 percent of those who disbelieve the scientific consensus became “much more sure” during the same period. “If climate were determined by public opinion,” Chameides writes, “it might seem that a global cooling trend ruled the day.”

It doesn’t. “The world is undoubtedly warming,” the Pew Center on Global Climate Change says on its website (www.pewclimate.org). This will cause a “sea-level rise that will . . . increase beach erosion and flooding from coastal storms, changes in precipitation patterns, increased risk of droughts and floods, threats to biodiversity, and a number of potential challenges for public health.”

http://www.utne.com/Environment/American-Psychosis-Global-Warming.aspx?utm_content=05.12.10+Arts&utm_campaign=Emerging+Ideas-Every+Day&utm_source=iPost&utm_medium=email

[azul]

1. Obviously, it's too threatening and uncomfortable to discuss even on DU.

Want to feel better about ourselves, self-esteem? Just try to stop burning oil in our cars and invading countries and killing people in oil wars.

Try to stop eating meat and animal farming that produces the biggest methane fart ever so that the sun will light it up in one tremendous flame-out of species.

Not really any question about it. Denial and apathy are the wrong choice.

[joshcryer]

4. We have such a bright future ahead!

And nuclear war is far more dangerous than silly old climate change!

[tinrobot]

2. Great article

As a society, we definitely are oil addicts, and breaking any addiction requires overcoming one's own denial of that addiction.

[troubledamerican]

3. It's not denial. It's about power.

Call it "cut off your nose to spite your face" or "passive-aggression to the Nth degree" -- the Right Wing wants absolute power, and if they don't/can't own an issue, including one that will kill us all, then so be it.

SO BE IT. NIHILISM. But Liberals won't believe this of Right-Wingers until it's too late, because innocent people refuse to recognize authentic evil because they refuse to project such a thing onto others or onto themselves.