TAKING CLIMATE ACTION EVEN WHEN YOU KNOW YOU’RE GOING TO LOSE
There are battles you fight, not because you think you can win, but because it gets harder to look in the mirror if you don't.
A recent article in DW asks the question “Support for climate action up, so why does it feel hopeless?”
Why indeed.
The answers are:
1. The Republican party
2. Evangelical White Christian Nationalists
3. Donald Trump
4. The donors and funders of Trump and the MAGA congregants
5. The increasing loss of agency by individuals in the daily battle against the world wide web, advertising, demands that we humans are but servomechanisms to Da Machine, the inability to get any corporation, bank, pharmacy, telecommunications company, public agency regulator, or health care provider to apologize and to treat you with respect.
6. The effects of disenfranchisement and widespread violence making people conflict-avoidant.
“Despite misinformation, divisive political rhetoric and angry protests, an overwhelming majority of people seem to back climate action. But to make real progress, analysts say, people need to realize they're not alone,” DW continues.
A study released in February by the University of Bonn, the Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE and the University of Copenhagen reveals that 86% of the world population supports climate measures, with 89% calling for even more political action.
The study was carried out in 2021 and 2022 across 125 countries, with behavioral researchers speaking with almost 130,000 people, either by phone or in person.
This disconnect fuels climate anxiety, an overwhelming sense of guilt or panic over global heating and the cascading effects of climate change.
"Climate has been politicized in many, many parts of the world," said Li Shuo, who heads up the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Washington.
And yet, people continue to email and phone their senators and congressmembers, governors and state and city legislators. People continue to email and phone the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service and the California Public Utilities Commission demanding action. They are largely ignored. They keep doing it.
Schoolchildren sue the states for environmental protection. This actually succeeded, in Montana.
Judge Kathy Seeley of the 1st Judicial District Court in Montana found that Montana youth have a “fundamental constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment, which includes climate” as she struck down two laws that bar state agencies from considering the climate effects of fossil fuel projects.
As for Congress, there is one action that can be taken.
Vote.