Climate change is out of the closet
Climate Change is not a Y2K-type glitch. It is not speculative, panic enducing, profit-driven bad science provocation. And it will not go away. The reality is that much key research on climate change has been overlooked, underplayed and frozen six feet under. Especially in the last 6 dark years of unenlightened global warming leadership. The Anti-Kyoto stance claimed global warming just wasn't good business. Until today Global Warming just wasn't hot enough and activism has struggled to find a good cause. Environmentalists stonewalled by fossil science lobbies, anti-war movements ridiculed and roped in. What to fight for? What to defend?
Enter you tube. my space. the internet as an echo chamber of personal voice, awareness, frustration.
Suddenly popular outcries against injustice and political ineptitude (there is no shortage of either) are resurfacing and finding media and business sponsors. Earth's terminal, if preventable disease, can be good business. Like AIDS and Cancer research. Energy efficiency efforts will call for major consumption paradigm overhauls, from denial to awareness, from greed to planetary know-how, from Humvees to electric hybrid cars, from carelessness to zero CO2 emissions per person.
Climate Change is as complex to understand as it is to explain. But hey! The core message has downsized to sound and videobytes. It's no longer easy-to-sabotage rocket science, it's red hot blog, chat and hip content. What media hysteria? If you don't follow the Climate Change story you are simply not cool, you're so 20th century. (Remember that? It was about myopia, self-interest and pollution records)
I can only hope coordinated efforts to talk about (first) and change (ultimately) Climate Change patterns will catalyze collective intelligence and cultural creativity. This is the upside of globalization, clearly, the good old common good notion. Channelling non-profit motivations via the industrial complex with global environmental benefits is welcome. An obvious turning point.
After all we suffered in recent years, a little responsibility, some profitable conservation clean ups, some sober seminars, and some fresh leadership (politics are a renewable energy, says Al Gore) are nothing for the Big Boys to really get hysterical about.
Daniel Alegi
Karlstad, Sweden
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Faceless
Hot Planet, Thirsty Joburg
