[Sosfbay-discuss] "Apocalypse Fatigue: Losing the Public onClimateChange"
Tian Harter
tnharter at aceweb.com
Wed Nov 18 14:39:38 PST 2009
Brian Good wrote:
>
> We're not getting any sense of urgency from authority figures about
> the issue. Al Gore made his movie in 2006 and then moved on to other
> things. I never saw him (or anybody) barnstorming around trying to
> stir people up. Is Obama even acknowledging the problem?
> Has anybody criticized him for shirking it?
>
>
I beg to differ. For one thing, I saw Gore speaking in 2007 at the
Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose, so he is still talking on it.
Not only that, but after the 2006 thing he set up a group that has
been training people to do versions of that presentation, and I know
several people that did speaking tours as part of that. Probably at
least one of them would be glad to do their talk again if they could
find a local audience that wanted to hear it.
The real problem is that there is cavernous gap between collective
issues and personal issues that has been strip mined by the status quo
to perpetuate itself. Part of that is the role of "God" in religion,
part of that is the role of the sovereign in politics, another part of
it is the role of advertising in corporate profits. I'm not sure about
how K Street fits in, but they probably have something to do with it to.
I like to illustrate it by talking about 911. 9/11 was a collective
event. Dialing 911 is usually a personal event for the caller or someone
else in the general area.
> There's no best-selling book--no Paul Ehrlich or Linus Pauling of
> climate change. There's no conspicuous activist group or leader--no
> Code Pink or David Swanson. It's not happening because it's not
> happening. Somebody needs to write the book, make the movie
> or the videos, start the group, get some visibility.
>
There are plenty of conspicuous groups. 1sky.org comes to mind. They
were tabling at the green festival. Live Earth was fairly big.
StepItUp.org has had several events that made a lot of local media all
over. Barbara Kingsolver wrote a book about eating locally. Michael
Pollan buries an understanding of these issues in everything he writes.
I often hear him interviewed again on national media. Remember that
"Farmer In Chief" stuff? The fact that you think "nothing is happening"
says more about you than "we".
I grew up in the federal bureaucracy, and my perception was that my
father was always scrambling from "critical emergency" to "critical
emergency". When I got involved with politics I was looking for a
problem that would "hold still" long enough to get beyond that jangling.
Oil consumption habits fit the bill very well. All those people that
suffer because of high gas prices? You are welcome to change your ways!
It's not like it's a mystery what changes would help...
Obviously we're not getting any sense of urgency from authority figures.
The oil, car, and pharmaceutical companies paid good money to give us
"authority figures" that like lining their pockets. Get a clue!
Sunday I saw Starhawk say "we can't wait for leadership from Washington
on climate change". I saw Acterra's Debbie Mytels say the same thing
years ago. It was a good idea then and it's a good idea now. We gotta
make progress on this issue without leadership from above. It has to
come from the grass roots. In San Francisco's City Hall I saw it put
differently. This guy said at a hearing on peak oil "All the emergency
plans I know about boil down to 'stop the bleeding and wait for help
to arrive'. This crisis is different. To address it we need to
decentralize."
Think globally and act locally. Art is our path to the mainstream stage.
There are too many powerful interests keeping us out of the conventional
mainstream media.I was discussing 911 with a Kiwi I know. She told me
"we dial 111 for emergency services." The reason we dial 911 is that
when the service was invented 111 was already the area code for a
powerful zone. K St. probably had something to do with that. The first
time I mentioned it to someone else, we were looking at a statue of a
homeless man sleeping (dead?) in a cardboard box in an art gallery.
There was $1.11 by his hand. I told the guy that happened to be there
"In New Zealand 111 is their 911." Please notice that no actual homeless
were harmed in the typing of this paragraph. Don't get me started on the
topic of "Mexicans" in free speech.
Tian
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:09:52 -0800
> From: wrolley at charter.net
> To: sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org
> CC: gerrygras at earthlink.net
> Subject: Re: [Sosfbay-discuss] "Apocalypse Fatigue: Losing the Public on
> Climate Change"
>
> Gerry,
> That is interesting an maybe more true than some of the corporate pablum
> that Nordhaus and Schellenberger have put out in the past. However, I
> think that they miss some very well known, accepted facts. We only need
> to recall the hierarchy of needs described by Maslow. When people are
> out of work, when they lose their homes due to rising medical bills as
> was depicted on ABC's NightLine last night, they are dealing with
> immediate survival threats. It is not difficult to match the decline in
> support of action on climate change to the decline of the economy.
>
> So, it is not the apocalyptic vision that is wrong, because it is not,
> but rather the lack of immediacy that we have to deal with. In this
> sense, they are correct. Every time that we present the case for global
> warming through the image of a polar bear, we sell the idea that the
> threat is far away in both space and time. We need to bring it much
> more close to home and to make people realize that the effects are not
> in some future time, but right now, that action now is the only way to
> forestall economic devastation later.
>
> As a political party, Greens have somewhat the same failing. Recently,
> I used a quote from Julia Butterfly Hill to the effect "Many of us have
> gotten so good at defining what we are against that what we are against
> has started to define us." That is the argument against using *only*
> negative calls to action on climate change. That is why 350.org, for
> all the organizational skill it demonstrated, missed the opportunity to
> make a larger connection when McKibben failed to call for any policy
> specifics.
>
> If we are to be successful, we need to start defining what we are for,
> to paint the picture of a better future that they need Greens to show
> the way. If we want to make inroads into the pubic consciousness, then
> we have to show what it would be like to live in a world where Green
> values prevail.
>
> Wes
>
> Gerry Gras wrote:
>
> FWIW,
> an article trying to explain American attitudes
> and thinking about climate change.
>
> "Apocalypse Fatigue: Losing the Public on Climate Change"
> http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/17-4
>
> Gerry
>
> P.S. The discussion about political psychology could be
> relevant to why third parties have a hard time.
>
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>
>
>
>
> --
> "Anytime you have an opportunity to make things better and you don't, then you are wasting your time on this Earth" Roberto Clemente
>
> Wes Rolley
> 17211 Quail Court, Morgan Hill, CA 95037
> http://www.refpub.com/ -- Tel: 408.778.3024
>
>
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Tian
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Latest addition: green festival pictures and words from San Francisco.
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