“If we do not solve this problem soon, we will not
solve it. We are called upon to act with all that we have. It is the fight of
our time — and we need you.”—Environmental author-activist Bill McKibben, on
climate change, quoted in Jamie Landers, “Bill McKibben Calls for Individual Action and Collective Climate Change Reversal,”
The Chautauquan Daily, Aug. 15, 2019
At the moment, many would say that the coronavirus
pandemic is “the fight of our time”—and I’m not sure I would quarrel with that
assessment.
But I strongly believe that climate change has this
in common with COVID-19: It is an emergency waiting to happen, a perfect storm
resulting from authoritarian instincts that smother inconvenient bad news, our
country’s unwillingness to make prudent investments that might stave off
disaster, and—I might as well say it—a President who scoffs at science and even
elementary facts while turning a real but by means insoluble problem into a
massive catastrophe that didn’t have to happen. And it has similar potential to create a Darwinian struggle in which the haves are far, far more likely to survive than the have-nots.
Take a look around at all the people wearing masks
today. In the not-so-distant future, given that President’s attitude toward the
environment—and his diehard followers’ swallowing of nearly every word he
says—it is not at all inconceivable that those masks may come into use again,
even after this particular pandemic subsides, if our air becomes too polluted
to breathe.
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