Climate change is here, like the Old Testament God, with thunder and brimstone, hurricanes and drought. I have a friend who is of the distinctly denial-ist cast of mind, and he can only say "well, what are we going to do about it?" There is nothing we can do about it. When your planet is raining judgment on your ass, there's nothing you can "do about it", as in try to get it to stop. There's no bargaining with a planetary system, at least by such paltry beings as we are.
But we can mend our ways, not because it's going to "arrest" climate change, that isn't going to happen, but to start on the long, long road to making another way of life that might be viable in the long, long run. A way of life that respects the inter-relationship between civilization and biology, rather than our current way of life that is based on us civilized humans shamelessly and short-sightedly exploiting biology (and geology and each other and everything that we can get our hands on.) We've been refining the machine for thousands of years now - the civilizational machine that let us crush every indigenous culture that ever humbly co-existed with an environment. "We" "won." And in winning, it seems that we lost as much as we won.
I'm re-reading Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel," which is a fine book that presents an environmental explanations for why "the West" could crush every other culture in the world. His explicit purpose is to counter the white supremacist argument, so common until relatively recently and still lurking out there at present, that "the West" "won" because white Europeans are better at everything. Diamond's argument is convincing and necessary.
But I'm also arguing with the book as much as I am agreeing with it, because Diamond can't seem to help siding with the conquerors. Can't blame him, it's a long tradition in our culture to side with the winners, because we're that kind of culture. But being able to conquer and annihilate another culture is not winning. This is becoming increasingly clear as our conquering machine of a civilization has come to the end of its leash, having poisoned all the wells and enslaved all the people. So here we are, with the Arctic and Antarctic breaking apart, struggling to figure out how to live, when all those native peoples that we ran over maybe had some insights on the question.
BTW, come to the Hawaii Agricultural Conference y'all, where there will be multiple sessions on indigenous agriculture.
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Being of a 'distinctly denial-ist' cast of mind', the question "What are we going to do about it?" was and is intended to spur thought in search of an answer.
It's an open question; one that is (or should be) engrained in our subconscious minds. Only then will it make an impact on our daily activities that can lead to better long-term outcomes. Change comes hard, and regrettably, almost impossible until there is no other option.
As you suggest, we, as a society, are too often focused on the wrong things- which begs the question: who is leading the dialogue? Are they knowledgeable? Are they credible? If not, how do we change that?
You see, asking questions should not be mistaken for resignation, rather an opportunity for an exchange of ideas.
A casting - unless as applied to a drama, is hard, brittle, unbending chunk of metal. A mind could not be more different. Minds are malleable. They can be plied, mended, changed. Ultimately, that's the change we want while searching for answers to the question.
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