"...one of a few million favoured human beings who live ultimately on the degradation of the rest."
- George Orwell's definition of the middle class, 1941
What if I had uncovered a secret Monsanto plot to raise the temperature of the planet by six degrees through genetically modifying the respiratory process (to release more Co2) of soy bean so that their patented heat resistant corn would take over the market?
Or, what if ISIS was developing a weapon that they planted deep in the Syrian desert that converts sunshine to carbon dioxide in order to turn the entire planet into a barren waste land?
Or, what if Ebola mutated to cause hemorrhaging of ocean algae, therefore eliminating one of the largest biological carbon sinks on the planet and causing rapid temperature increases and climactic instability?
Everyone would go batshit. We'd instantly mobilize and defeat climate change. When someone else is causing the problem, that's what we do. But, since our relative wealth is a direct result of our carbon intensive economy, what do we do with the realization that we are the problem?
Current inaction on climate change benefits the status-quo. Right wing politicians understand this, which is why they fight so hard to continue with a steady course of denial and inaction (only 3% of Republican elected officials at the federal level have gone on record accepting the reality of climate change). And, to a certain extent, we all understand that the status-quo will have to be upended in order to fight climate change. So, we compartmentalize climate change in an area of the brain reserved for future thought. We justify our inability to do anything about it with the fact that there are more pressing issues on our plate: we spend $10 million per day to fight ISIS; we fear the almost nonexistent chance that EBOLA will cause a US Pandemic; and, we maintain that genetic modification is a tipping point in the human evolution of food. A popular political candidate in Hawai'i (who I will not name) has used Facebook to combine all of the above threats to insinuate that Monsanto worked with the Department of Defense to create Ebola and that they are using Kaua'i to experiment with it. That candidate's innate ability to draw on our collective societal fears is a main driver of his popularity.
Yet, I understand our communal unwillingness to engage in the complex topic of climate change. Because there is no tangible enemy to fight, we can't fix climate change through war or merely by throwing more money at it. Effective action on climate change is not just research and development of renewable energy and it's not capitalistic deployment of carbon capture technology. The fact that our planet is warming from unfettered economic growth fueled by stored carbon necessitates a complete societal and economic restructuring.
The one billion starving people in the world need adequate food before they can think about smaller families and preserving rainforest. And, in turn, we need to eliminate poverty to end starvation. The only hope for developing countries to reject oil and coal (the cheap energy sources that brought unprecedented wealth to developed nations) is to use our wealth to advance their economic security.
As a quick aside, let me clarify when I say "our wealth." I mean the relative wealth of the US. Not the $842 that I currently have in my savings account. The top 10% of Americans own 75% of the wealth, yet pay 68% of the income taxes. And, while our economy has exploded since 1979, look at the graph below to see where all that wealth has gone.
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| http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph |
On a local level, when the average Kauaian is struggling to pay their mortgage and afford groceries, who can blame us for not caring about climate change? Which is partly why (there are many other reasons, including basic morality) reducing inequality has to be the social priority of anyone who cares about preserving biodiversity and maintaining a planet conducive to human civilization.
As voting middle-class members of the wealthiest democracy on Earth, it's up to us to take stock of our privilege and step out of our comfort zone to start combating the forces of climate change: consumerism fueled by laissez faire capitalism and social darwinism. To be a modern environmentalist means incorporating socialist ideology;* as they go hand in hand. And any modern environmental movement that ignores the human aspect of our economic system is doomed to fail.
Check out the following graphs from the Institute of Policy Studies and Peace for a snapshot on the undervaluation of climate change investment (including energy R&D, science funding, and climate change related foreign aid) when compared with military investment.
As defined by Wikipedia:
"Social democrats have advocated for a peaceful and evolutionary transition of the economy to socialism through progressive social reform of capitalism.[4][5] Social democracy asserts that the only acceptable constitutional form of government is representative democracy under the rule of law.[6] It promotes extending democratic decision-making beyond political democracy to include economic democracy to guarantee employees and other economic stakeholders sufficient rights of co-determination.[6] It supports a mixed economy that opposes the excesses of capitalism such as inequality, poverty, and oppression of various groups, while rejecting both a totally free market or a fully planned economy.[7] Common social democratic policies include advocacy of universal social rights to attain universally accessible public services such as education, health care, workers' compensation, and other services, including child care and care for the elderly.[8] Social democracy is connected with the trade union labour movement and supports collective bargaining rights for workers."
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