by KC Golden, via Getting a Grip
Dad, isn’t Jim Hansen that NASA mega-whiz you call “America’s pre-eminent climate scientist,” which is like geezerese for the smartest guy in the room? And what is brain dude thinking when he says “Game over for the Climate”?
“Game”? You call this a game? When losing it means “billions of people will be condemned to poverty and much of civilization will collapse”? K. Ceee, I know you’re super-busy but I need you to pay attention.
Which part of this sounds like a game to you? The billions? The people? The poverty? The civilization? The collapse? Daaad, back away from the smartphone. I mean it. Focus! You can’t just go “game over for the climate… New game!”… like there’s an app for what happens after you lose this one.
Dad, dude, Angry Birds is a game. Climate disruption is just dumping on your kids’ head. Are you laughing? Because if you’re laughing, I can find an assisted living facility in Siberia. Don’t push me.
Maybe it feels like a game, since you’ll probably kick the bucket before all this collapsing goes down. You’re kinda playing with other people’s money, huh? But when it’s your kids’ money, aren’t you at least supposed to act serious?
And even if it were a game, y’oldsters have a lot of nerve calling it “over.” Dad, you’ve been lacing up your shoes and picking your noses for decades. Did I miss the part where you actually got in there and started playing? ‘Cause sitting here thinking about the horror show of a future you’re cookin up, I’m seeing zero game.
What I do hear is a lot of yap: “It’s not happening.” “It’s happening but we’re not causing it.” “We’re causing it but soon it will be China’s fault.” “It’s too big, too complicated.” “Somebody’s gonna screw the future so we might as well get the jobs.” All kind o’ of bob and weave and shuck and jive. But “game”? You got some game Pops?. Well bring it then! Cuz “game over” just sounds like the beginning of your next lame excuse for failing to deal.
OK, yeah, I get it. Jim Hansen is warning about “game over” for the right reason – to kick your sagging kiesters into gear before it’s too late. ‘Preciate that.
But listen, Pop, you don’t have a cane to lean on when you start croaking “game over.” It’s no game, and it is never over. Whatever you do now to improve the situation is crap I don’t have to shovel later. So quit crying in your beer and DO STUFF.
Get in the game Dadddyyy, ’cause when it’s “over” for you, it’s on for me.
KC Golden is the Policy Director at Climate Solutions. This piece was originally published at the Getting a Grip on Climate Solutions blog and was re-printed with permission.
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Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
my personal read on where we are now as ‘climate activists’- On the one hand: YES, as this article admonishes; DO SOMETHING, anything is better than nothing, keep pushing, use every courageous and creative bone in your body!!! On the other hand: ‘wow, 400 ppm CO2 (in the arctic), wow, natural gas is the new crack cocaine, wow, even the ‘best’ of what we can expect as president barely even mentions climate change.’…and there is the ‘tang’ in the air that we (humans) will simply not act in substantive ways (re: put the brakes on the carbon emissions NOW) until the pain is undeniably in-all-of-our-faces worse than not taking substantive action. So…I suppose it is a dance between remaining focused and inspired and allowing myself to grieve the unnecessary tragedy that unfolds before us.
Correction: Natural Gas is the new frack cocaine.
good one!
It may be worth considering that if the climate issue is indeed insolvable, different strategies apply and are ethically defensible than were in a world while we assumed that the disaster could still and indeed be avoided. I agree with Hansen: disaster is largely unavoidable now, we are too late. As well, I believe we’ll soon begin to see the personal profiteering by the marketing of false hopes as exploitative rather than constructive.
I agree. I think we’ve reached a point where nonviolent civil disobedience is the best tool we’ve got. But that only works if we all join together and put our bodies in the gears. None of us can do it alone.
I agree.
Also:
1) I think Hansen meant the Civilization game.
2) Gore nailed it with the title “An Inconvenient Truth” – which was the main point of this post
You betcha! The entrepreneurs of salvation, the peddlers of Hopium and the gurus of ‘adaptation’ will be swarming out from ‘neath their rocks as doom approaches. Making a buck out of our species’ demise will be a fitting epitaph, encapsulating all that we have been driven to become. It won’t just be in ‘commerce’ only, either. Already we have a champion huckster in the White House, and less talented political confidence-men, promising ecological salvation but delivering frenzied destruction in pursuit of the main chance, elsewhere.
Corporations, “People” now, can still pollute the commons for profit. I, a flesh and blood “people” cannot do that. If I throw a paper cup out the car window, bingo, ~$100 fine. Corpro/People are allowed to throw hundreds of pounds of toxic stuff out my tailpipe and amass multi-billions of $$$. You and I are even forced to subsidize the ecocide of the planet with our tax dollars without our consent, whereas the GOP do not fund abortion! Very strange.
I can see how this editorial wins points for the trendy snark value it offers, but at what point are you required to write seriously about an issue you agree is serious?
Isn’t “Game Over” really a way Hansen (or the NY Times editors) was trying to oversimplify what is at stake? He’s being a bit flippant if that’s the title he opted for but it’s no reason to rub his nose in his advanced age group. Especially when it’s the 20-ish hipsters who are married to their tech gadgets!
Unfettered free market capitalism combined with for-profit media and a gullible and impressionable populace (who believe in an ideal afterlife) made a perfect storm for an environmental meltdown. Until those underlying causes are remedied then nothing can change. Basically, 7 billion people have to simultaneously change their whole approach to life and their relationship to the planet. Profit can no longer be the primary goal.
Oggy, if you forgive me, I think you have it wrong. ’7 billion’ are not to blame for our coming demise. Several billion live in deep and worsening poverty, and make considerably less destructive contribution to our plight. The main culprits are the inhabitants of the morally necrotic states of the West, and their kleptocratic ruling elites in particular. When business thugs get paid over one billion a year for financial manipulation that in any sane and decent society would be considered crime, while tens of millions work hard for poverty wages, you are living in a society of evil, as are all capitalist states, to varying degrees. That’s where you’ll find the assassins of our species, the genocidaires-in the luxury hotels and exclusive ‘retreats’.
yes it is criminal what elites do through corporate actions..but why take a tiger to court for eating meat?
That is what we are talking about…you can replace a tiger with an herbivore, or you can take the tiger to court for killing and eating meat…which makes more sense?
I do not deny personal resonsibility, it is not either-or…but institutional including LEGAL frameworks (that mandate externalization of all costs as much as possibole, that mandate short term profit
maximization, etc) is the tiger we have created..there is no law of physics that states it must be that way, these are social
choices…even if you “win” in court against one tiger, 100 others exist and 100 others will be born…stop giving birth to tigers…yes I am taking the Corporation and the individual CEO as if they are the
same, they are not
but by taking a CEO to court you’re not that different…you still have an economic model that will make it very likely the next CEO *will do the same*, or another CEO of another companyh will…or if not the CEO, then some astro-turf group will do
it…it’s a losing battle..
and we don’t have that many decades
plus it has 0% chance of working as noted above, just new tigers are born
I’d rather take the 1% chance (I think it’s higher than 1%) of replacing the economic system with something more sane, more humane, and that does not _mandate_ murderous tigers the way our system
_mandates_ putting profits over all else (yes, a super-moral CEO would still avoid things..and then they would get replaced with a less moral one..we still lose)
Build the new economic system from the grassroots level from the bottom up
See Alternatives To Wall Street project on our website linked to in our name
Wall Street is the apotheosis of financial parasitism. Either it goes, and the kleptocrats put to useful work, planting trees, cleaning up pollution or growing food for their neighbours etc, or humanity does. Good luck with your project, and if I might be so bold as to offer advice-be radical, cut to the root of the problem and do not compromise. It is way too late for that.
Thanks..Drop us a note if you wish: econdemocracy (not economicdemocracy) then gmail dotcom..we may have a question about AU for you anyway :-)
probably too much to think that someone could make a billion on the stocks and then do a Dudley do right and just say “I’m done” before he/she became a plutocrat.
Would make a great fairy tale though.
Maybe he means that it isn’t a game and is so important that we shouldn’t be playing a game with even the mention or idea of the destabilization.
Probably means that the weather could turn even meaner than that bad cop or even the street punk that showed the mean way.