Climate Change: A Human Responsibility - No Matter If You Believe Humanity Is Actually Responsible Or Not
"Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another." -Juvenal
It was famously noted by that great intellectual, thinker, and writer of his age, Aldous Huxley, that “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” And, as it concerns climate change and the threat that it poses upon humanity itself, it is important to remember that, even as conservative and reactionary climate denialists across the United States and the greater world ignore the clear evidence of catastrophic global climate change, the repercussions of that change are still being felt by all of us - including those that are being deceived and lied to.
The vast majority of the world knows what the trouble is, and the trouble is us. Humanity itself has built its own world on a planet; as the Roman statesman Cicero once noted, “...a sort of second nature within the world of nature.” Yet that world or “second nature” is not sustainable upon this Earth; it pollutes in every conceivable manner; its makers and inhabitants kill other creatures of the world, pour chemicals into the water and ground, and continuously release harmful gases into the atmosphere in immense quantities.
Those political parties and leaders around the world who do not believe that the world is running a fever and holding a chill are few and far between. Still, they remain powerful forces in the way of greater innovation and progress for all of humanity, human civilization, and the very planet we share with so many different plants and creatures.
The prevarication - by the likes of the now former Brazilian President Jair Balsonaro and his administration, the American Republican Party and the large majority of its state and federal leadership, as well as a few others - is, if not a symptom of stupidity, certainly one of greed. It, in more instances than not, can be traced back to money and to the support of powerful interests and lobbyists, as the stymieing of progress can usually be attributed to in one way or another.
As history has so often demonstrated, the power that can be gained by taking or holding such a position, along with the money, PR, powerful backers, and agreeable supporters that come with it - especially with those political ambitions and goals that often flitter through the minds of public figures considered - is all quite difficult for individuals and parties to deny in lieu of humanistic altruism. These politicians represent selfish, moneyed interests, and so act selfishly and interested not in humanity, but in money in the form of large profit margins for their friends, funders, and sometimes even family; like the 33rd American Vice-President before me, I call many of these individuals fascists.
“If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States…”
- Henry A Wallace, Former Vice President of the United States
In the United States today, as Republican politicians the nation over continue to hyper-focus upon the prospect of further conservative Supreme Court challenges and victories, they also remain convinced - without much doubt - that global climate change is either a consistently and naturally occurring, Earthly phenomenon of which we as a species cannot possibly be able to affect so intensely, or else a massive scientific conspiracy or hoax meant to convince the greater populace of erroneous falsehoods altogether. Neither explanation is very convincing, to be frank, and neither of the bases behind the first or second explanations are ever adequately addressed to the satisfaction of this author.
For as these excuses are made and made again, the climate continues to demonstrate devastating signs that, yes, it is drastically changing, and that, regarding the first aforementioned explanation, it is hardly even relevant within the context of the greater discussion or problem.
Each of these arguments, alas, really only serves as attempts to downplay the existential significance of the current climate change the earth is experiencing vis-a-vis the greater population and societies. Put another way, the first argument is, without question, as asinine in many ways as the second, often expounded bit of “logic,” if perhaps a bit less obviously grating on the ears or intellectually absurd.
And this is because, no matter who or what is responsible for the climate change that creates larger and deadlier tornados, flooding, cyclones, typhoons, monsoons, and hurricanes, more extreme temperature and weather fluctuation, blizzards, heatwaves, and base temperatures that are more extreme across the entire world than have likely been experienced in many thousands of years, it all affects humanity in severe and life-threatening ways, and must, therefore, be remedied even if it was the direct fault of, say, some cabal of aliens or animals instead of humans with decades of coal factories and disposable plastic straws.
It is, then, in the spirit of not going extinct, obviously our primary responsibility to relieve and redress this savage threat to ourselves and our world before the time is too late - which it is increasingly becoming. Tragedies and terrors across America, from the east coast which perenially suffers more extreme hurricane seasons, to the west coast which continues to burn as a result of inordinately dry and hot spells, to the midwestand southern states, which are susceptible or tornados, hurricanes, extreme heat and extreme cold during any given month, are not going to cease just because humans assure themselves that it all has nothing to do with our own existence upon this Earth.
Furthermore, they should not be tolerated or accepted, either as something like “God’s will” or else as the price to be paid for the innovations we have made; certainly, in either instance, they cannot be entirely ignored as scientific hoopla or conspiracy-mongering when the facts continue to demand consideration under the burden of storm force winds, the sporadic, torrential downpouring of snow or rain, or else blistering heatwaves that turn each neighborhood into a convection oven for several months out of each year. The science is clear, and for all of those folks who often say they need to see evidence, one might simply suggest opening up a newspaper or searching on the internet for the evidence you so demand to see, for it is out there in an embarrassment of riches.
Humanity cannot sustain itself under these increasingly severe conditions. The resources that we use, as well as the ruin that we leave in our wake, continue to take a toll upon the planet itself. Each time a conservative, climate-denying politician in America torpedos a chance for that nation to make a significant difference regarding climate - with not only actions, but with leadership - it dooms not only the present a bit further but also future generations and the future itself. While Senators like Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona - both Democrats - should be politically pushed, prodded, and primaried as forcefully and as seriously as possible for their eternal prevarication regarding seemingly all forms of progress, they are two Senators out of 52 Democratic Senators who, by all indications, would move on climate innovation and legislation given the ability to do so.
Yet Senate Republicans - of which there are currently 48 of by my count - are unanimous in their apathy for the planet, the future, humanity, and innovations that would support any of them; their House colleagues are hardy better. While on a political level this is understandable given the tension between Democrats and Republicans on many or most issues, but on a human, intellectual or scientific level, it is literally unbelievable. That not even a small contingent, one-fifth or even one-tenth, of Republican Senators have the sense or moral fortitude to take the obviously correct stance upon a subject that literally has the ability to wipe out humanity and human civilization from the world itself is staggering, but should not be surprising - despite my use of the word unbelievable just above.
Republicans are watching over the forced, functional and moral regression of America by the Supreme Court thanks to undue interference across at least the last two decades, during which time they actually threw around the idea of shrinking the SCOTUS; Republicans do not jump to destroy the Senate filibuster despite its undemocratic nature, any more than they look to hold the former-President who tried to overthrow the rule of law accountable for doing so. Why would this party, which seeks to roll back rights and liberties for women, transgender individuals, black and brown individuals, as well as the communities of all the aforementioned, while trying to diminish the positive role in education and environmental care that the Federal Government can play in the lives of everyday people, care to save the Earth from the human virus which sickens it so?
There is, after all, money to be made in coal and oil, as Joe Manchin and so many politicians of both sides of the aisle could tell you themselves. While once upon a time, the stigma associated with Big Oil was poisonous enough for still Representative and later Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson to understand that he could not - should he wish to one day become President of the United States - be connected too closely to either oil money or oil men, the masks have come off so to speak. Today, those beholden to fossil fuels and their industry in American politics often wear that support - or at least incorporate it into their political character - so proudly and daftly that one might be convinced of their genuine sincerity regarding it all.
But it is, to be sure, all a rather transparent ruse. The science regarding climate change is not new, nor is the clearly observable evidence regarding what humans do to the Earth, or what utilizing and burning these resources constantly across an entire planet could accomplish. The Roman Poet Lucretius of the first century BCE commented on the state of the world under the tyranny of man over 2000 years ago in perhaps his best-known work.
“It is food that every creature needs, the food that mends, supports, renews, replenishes. But now nature can give no more, and income must be lest than outgo. So many things wither, die, made mean by loss, by blows, within, without, assailed, besieged, betrayed, till at long last food fails, and the great walls are battered in. In just this way the ramparts of the world, for all their might, will some day face assault, be stormed, collapse in ruin and in dust. It is happening already; our poor earth, worn out, exhausted, brings to birth no more great eons, titans, huge majestic beasts; only our own disgusting little days, Midges and gnats the same earth who nourishes them now once brought forth vineyards and shining harvests, pastures, arbors and all this now our very utmost toil we hardly care for, we wear down our strength, whether in oxen or in men, we dull the edges of our plowshares, and in return our fields turn mean and stingy, underfed. And so today the farmer shakes his head, more and more often sighing that his work, the labor of his hands, has come to naught. When he compares the present to the past, the past was better, infinitely so. All things, little by little, waste away as time’s erosion crumbles them to doom.
- Lucretius, “On The Nature Of Things”
Meanwhile, nearer to our own present day, evidence has been both plentiful and obvious for decades. In the early 19th century, scientists like Joseph Fourier and John Tyndall were already coming to understand the explicitly scientific nature of different gasses covering the planet after being trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere. By the end of that century, newspapers were running articles about the possible dangers for such prolonged behaviour and by the early 20th, it was beginning to be noted as a real issue for both the present and future.
Public and private documents ranging from the 1950s to 70s, meanwhile, illustrate that those powerful companies and corporations also knew what they were doing then, while the government allowed for it all. Therefore, when a politician, scientist, or anyone else for that matter, suggests that the evidence is contested or not entirely clear, what becomes entirely clear is that they are in the pay or retention of an individual, individuals, or a greater group which holds these beliefs which happen to coincide with their own capital interests.
The extreme climate change that we are living through and experiencing cannot be stopped by ignoring it, any more than racism or the ever-encroaching fascism could be. For all of the most profound human challenges and struggles that humanity endures upon the planet, only confronting those issues can lead to innovations regarding them.
Any problem of which humans come into contact with - whether it be racism, fascism, or other explicitly human shortcomings in perception or intellectual development - or issues like climate change, of which are existential crises that, whether humanity wants to take credit for its acceleration and the consequences or not, can only be resolved through further planetary intervention and civilizational innovations by humanity. For the sake of ourselves as much as the planet and its other, equally deserving inhabitants, humanity must mend the world, whatever its issues happen to be - assuming fixing them remains within our power.
Yet it very much is within our power in this circumstance, as in most others; if humanity can add or detract to the burden that the Earth bears for the sake of capital, it can do so for the sake of existential survival too. For a person or peoples to ignore this shared, global burden is an abdication of one of the chief, natural duties of each human on this planet, but to do so from a position of power - whether political, financial, industrial, commerical, etc. - is perhaps criminal to varying degrees. Yet as the Greek playwright Sophocles noted in his famous work “Antigone,” perhaps it is simply all a part of humanity, and one part which, even more than 2000 years later, we as a species struggle to divest ourselves from.
“Man the master, ingenious past all measure,
past all dreams, the skills within his grasp—
he forges on, now to destruction,
now again to greatness.”
- Sophocles, “Antigone”
Should we, however, fail to reimagine our world, as well as how we exist within and upon it, in time to conserve the planet, environment, and its majestic diversity, it will be a failure that exists as a testament to how little we have truly grown over the generations and centuries. For humanity, the time is now, whether some care to see or admit it or now, and without action beyond even the Paris Climate Accords, future generations will have to shoulder a greater burden and horror, all while wondering why those of us living today did nothing to help or save them from their fate. For, as the French Philosopher Albert Camus noted some 80 years ago or so, “Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.”