by Robert McLean
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| 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.
