https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2023/06/omni-climate-memo-mondays-133-june-26.html
Michael Mann. “The Fragility of Truth in the Existential Climate Crisis.”
Dick. Detective Dramas, US Aggression, US Passivity.
Denial of climate danger continues.
Michael Mann. “The Fragility of Truth in the Existential Climate Crisis.” The Humanist (Summer 2023). “…as I argued in my book The New Climate War, we appear now to be moving past outright denial of the basic science as the evidence becomes plain to the person on the street in the form of the unprecedented heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods, and superstorms we are now witnessing.
We still, however, face a multi-pronged strategy by polluters and their enablers in the media and pundit class to distract, deflect, attack, divide, and delay. Among their preferred tactics today is the promotion of risky, unproven strategies, such as geoengineering or massive carbon capture and sequestration, and the promise of future action as an excuse for business-as-usual fossil fuel burning today.”
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Detective Dramas, US Aggressive Imperialism, and Failure to Resist Global Warming
I’m a fan of PBS crime fiction and documentary. At present the final episodes of “Endeavor” are showing. The subject of this episode and of all the detective programs is the pursuit of truth. The detectives suffer a wide range of stress and sometimes injury. In “Endeavor” the detectives adhere to their purpose no matter the personal cost. Chief Inspector Thursday has been shot and Inspector Morse falsely imprisoned; still they investigate, still they endeavor.
They offer us an unexpected parallel to the persistent research by the UN scientists of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who since 1990, despite well-funded opposition from the fossil fuels companies (like weapons, tobacco, and asbestos companies before them) and although CC sleuthing is more complex and planetary in significance, have told the truth about the increasing temperature, fires, floods, melting glaciers, and rising seas.
You and I are like the detectives in the dozens of dramas shown on PBS –Ridley, Death in Paradise, Poirot, Lewis, Inspector Morse, and the many more–in that we seek the truth about climate and nuclear weapons, our planet’s two greatest threats, to slow the advance of the first and abolish the second. The detectives are not done; trials to determine crime and punishment remain to complete the search for truth. Trials and convictions, however, are expected and justice restored.
In contrast, our climate and weapons scientist detectives have found the truth, but little has been done on any level of government to identify the malefactors—corporations and individuals, war monger profiteers and warming deniers for profit—and hold them accountable. Few corporate and government officials who chose commitment to armed violence or failed to choose commitment to abolishing C02, are facing prosecution. And another arduous struggle is ahead: to convince the majority of the populace to demand action sufficient to compel the war and warming makers to take responsibility and act in the interest of the public—and all species.
Everything has been tried, still global temperature continues to rise and nuclear war danger increases. People sometimes say to me, what can I do? I’m only one person. My reply is: join successful groups working for peace, justice, and ecology and give them the time and money you now expend on distractions from manifest, planetary, mutual danger. Examples of the thousands of peace, justice, and ecology defenders: World Beyond War. Code Pink. AFSC and FCNL. Locally: OMNI. Against nuclear weapons: ICAN won the Nobel Peace Prize, Ground Zero, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Nukewatch Quarterly. Against climate change: Nature Conservancy, EDF, NRDC, World Meteorological Org. See advocacy of policy orgs: https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2021/12/most-effective-nonprofits-fight-climate-change/621013/
Working with a group of striving peacemakers can be transformative personally, and it models for others to create the mass movement needed to persuade our governments to know and act for the truth.