It can be
and it must be. It's our only
chance. It's actually the biggest
challenge humanity has ever faced. And
we've been kidding ourselves about what it's going to take to get our emissions
down to the extent that they need to go down.
We're talking about an 80% lowering of emissions if human life and
society is to remain sustainable and viable as we know it! But that's going to require a huge shift in
our consciousness, our laws, regulations, habits and business practices.
We shouldn't
beat up on the big environmental groups, because they do fantastic work, yet
part of the reason why public opinion on this issue has been so shaky is that
it's not really enough to say to the public, "This is a huge problem. It's Armageddon." Watch Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" and be
afraid, be very afraid. But then you
say, "Well, the solution is very simple: You can change the kind of
light bulbs you use. Plus, we'll have
this complicated piece of legislation called cap and trade that you don't
really understand, but that basically means that companies here can keep on
polluting, and they're going to trade their rights to carbon emissions. And then somebody else is going to plant
trees on the other side of the planet and they'll get credits."
And people
look at this and say to themselves, "Okay, if this really was a crisis of
the magnitude that is alleged, wouldn't be we be responding way more
aggressively? Wouldn't we be responding
in a way that we've responded in the past during wartime, where there's been a
kind of a collective sense of shared responsibility?"
When we
really do feel that sense of urgency
about an issue -- and I believe we should feel it about climate change -- we
are willing to sacrifice. We have shown
that in the past. But when you talk
about a supposed emergency and actually don't ask anything major of people,
they think you might be lying, that it might not really be an emergency after
all. So if this is an emergency, we have
to act like it. And yeah, this is an
emergency.
Naomi Klein
is the author of "The Shock Doctrine:
The Rise of Disaster Capitalism." Readers of two influential
magazines to put Naomi Klein high on the list of the 100 leading public
thinkers in the world. She is now working
on a new book and documentary on how climate change can spur political and
economic transformation. She also has
joined with the environmental writer and activist Bill McKibben in a campaign
launched this week called "Do the Math."
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