Climate change is not being addressed is complicated

Sustainable Transition is Complicated

We want someone to blame, and even argue that “we are the system”, and we are all to blame, but we are not. The system will take its own course, as it always has.

And all signs are that the courses our energy/resource, economic and ecological/climate systems are on, lead in each case to an End Game.These are the main issues we face:

• Deniers - cherry picking small pieces of information and relying on people’s lack of comprehension and capacity for research to sow doubt and uncertainty. Common arguments include:
  • China is responsible for the issues not us.
• Undermining expertise and intellect - (Goebbals, Gove, Bannon, Farage, Savarola, Trump, Putin) creating division between those who care, and those they care about
• Religion - prizing faith over research and evidence based approaches & telling people that their own higher power won’t allow destruction, floods and desertification
• Mercantilist capitalism - capitalism, a great system that has done more to reduce poverty than nearly any other institution, but corrupted and protected by governments in order to allow them to exhaust resources rather than respond to the consequent changes in supply and demand
• First past the post electoral systems - promoting single issue politics (Brexit), and weakening the capacity of smaller parties to campaign for complex longer term issues (understandably seen as secondary)
• Consolidation of the media - I don’t subscribe the conspiracy theories, but 80% of all UK media is controlled by just 4 men - and any economist can tell you the damage done by oligopoly - and any political scientist can appall you with horror stories of what oligarchies do
• Apathy/(bread and circuses) - compare subscriptions to sky sports against subscriptions to Greenpeace - once the bread gets a bit short, it’ll be too late
• Technoutopianism - I’m a fan of a technological solution - but it is a bet and a risky one too - the interrelationships of climate and environment are complex, and the rise of the scientific method over superstition has been incredibly successful in speeding up progress, but it can take a long time, and as you can see from the thermometer below we are already crazily close to the +1.5C increase
• Poor education standards - making it easier for people to be misled through ignorance of the availability of data for research and forecasting (negating their talents and intellect)
• Undiagnosed and untreated mental illnesses - narcissism, psychopathy of the wealthy and those in power.
• Copyright and patent system - if we could copy the code of FB, Gmail, Youtube and distribute it, we would not have to sit through endless advertising promoting excessive consumption just to connect with one another.
• Undisclosed corporate lobbying - many politicians migrate between private and governmental positions.
• Pro natalism - it's inherent in our culture to have more kids. The best thing you can do for the planet is have 1 or less children.

The argument that is presented on this site is that these issues are a symptom, a consequence of a root cause.