'Brutal facts' will not wake people up to climate change

The brutality of facts is simply not enough to “wake people up” to the crushing realities of climate change.

Strangely, and perversely it is those very crushing realities that mentally and emotionally distance people from coming to terms with climate change.

To avoid such confrontations is as natural to humans as breathing and all of us inherently distance ourselves, if not physically then certainly intellectually, from anything foreign to that which will allow us to prosper.

Many people, in fact most of us, procrastinate and will embrace any doubt that will allow the preservation of what we prefer and climate change, whose reality is explained by a science, whose very clarity depends on doubt and questioning, is naturally one of those things about which we prefer not to think, and subsequently not take any action about.

Bloomberg tells us that the U.S. and European Union are pushing for a stronger explanation about the dangers of climate change and the consequences of failing to stem fossil-fuel emissions.

That is explained in a story headed: “Five years 2,000 scientists, how do you wake people up to climate change?”

The raw brutality of the science will not be enough, rather we need some sort of social movement that comes from the bottom-up and is embraced with equal enthusiasm by a top-down agreement.