I was talking to someone the other week who was a staunch believer in capitalism to the point that rather than see any change, any regulation of fossil fuels, he said “I’d rather take my chances with climate change”. Few things are so harrowing and distressing to me as people understimating the problem. I know that people getting overwhelmed by hopelessness is a real phenomenom but I run in to way more often people who have the opposite problem; they don’t see how serious and * the stakes are.
He also asked that if it is so real, “when will it start?” and after I said that it has already started, over four million have already died. (And since that discussion I’ve found out that climate change has caused the Earth to start rotating faster for the first time in recorded history.)
He was like “four million? Still fewer than Stalin. I’ll still to capitalism, thanks”. Even though four million is only the beginning and orders of magnitude are still on the proverbial chopping block if climate change continues, and…
Letting people die because of a stubborn, wrong-headed clinging to a specific economic ideology, a specific iteration of our chosen resource-and-task distribution protocol, is lysenkoism by any other name.
In this case, we’re ruled by a system that exacerbates human greed, increases the wealth gap, and wrecks the environment. Timothy 6:10. Cash rules everything around me.
We do need to act now. Regulate environmental externalities such as fossil fuel extraction and greenhouse gas emission as soon as possible.