The ice melts and like Nero we fiddle

by Robert McLean

 



Gustave Flaubert who said: “To
be stupid, selfish and have
good health are the
three requirements for
happiness. Though if stupidity
 is lacking, all is lost”.

Several Beneath the Wisteria supporters have read one of the latest pieces from George Monbiot and one asked “What are we doing about it?”

Sadly and pessimistically, I would suggest “very little” even though many corporations, organizations, companies and individuals claim they are “green”, the melting of the Arctic ice and a the warming of the world suggests we are doing nought.

Although individual efforts are honourable and warrant applause and even though pressure from the bottom is critical and essential to the achievement of a lasting change, what the world needs, urgently, is a top down driven change to our way of life.

The true realities of our changing climate will settle upon humanity this century and what are mostly hollow claims of being green will play no role in enabling us to cope with the emerging difficulties.

The world needs, right now, courageous and charismatic leaders able to illustrate to the business as usual boosters that our present way of life is not only unsustainable, but seriously worsening the state of the world.

Some argue the technology will provide the answers and while that may be a comforting thought and within that be a wonderful endorsement of science; the same science the climate change skeptics not only question, but mostly disbelieve.

The question is not really simply about an agreement or otherwise with science for it seems to be for deeper, stretching to be an ideological battle; a polarization that has a religious-like energy in which there is only right or wrong and seemingly no neutral ground on which people can gather, an isthmus from which they can reach down to save the world, from its own stupidity.

Sitting here writing, I look up at a Gustave Flaubert quote I have on the wall that says: “To be stupid, selfish and have good health are the three requirements for happiness. Though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost”.  

Humanity seems to put hedonistic happiness ahead of all else and in doing so allow its stupidity to bolt free, selfishly disabling the acclaimed good sense of humans and so risking the near ideal atmospheric conditions that have allowed humans for flourish.

Monbiot’s article, The Heat of the Moment, is frightening reading, but something we must contemplate and act on, quickly.