Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Patrick Brown and the Breakthrough Institute are underwritten by oil money, meat interests and nuclear industry cash. Brown labors, ultimately, on behalf of the cascading uncertainty rule – the corporate conspiracy to elicit popular trust.
In this post, I will provide an example of how I evaluate the question of whether I have been brainwashed in the case of climate change, contrasting the way my knowledge is “received” to that of the opposition.
Nearly every major oil and gas company now claims that they accept the science and that they support sensible climate policies. But their actions speak louder than words.
In her new book, Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet – And How We Fight Back, Kate Aronoff describes how a new type of denialism is taking hold in the fossil fuel industry, a bid to ward off systemic change and protect the business model.
Science is not a debate. It is not a conversation between opposing points of view. It is not a balanced discussion of belief systems.
The institution behind the Great Barrington Declaration, the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), is a free-market think tank tied to funding from the Koch petrochemical and industrial empire and an investment firm with significant holdings in fossil fuels.
I apologise for my part in a civilization that made Apocalypse Never a bestseller. I hope that you will have both the capacity inherited from my generation and a fortitude of your own to learn from my failings, and to build a better civilization over the ashes of mine.
Sometimes, my American friends tell me how lucky I am because I live in a country where the top politicians haven’t embraced climate science denial as they did in the US. But things are changing: climate is becoming a politically explosive issue in Italy.
So if you’re trying to get someone to open their mind, you might consider the idea of a having tough, nuanced conversation … and actually hearing them out. Good, old-fashioned, respectful debate? I’d take that over a rage fest or shoutathon any day.
We can no longer give voice to the pseudo-science of climate change deniers; we must urgently move the debate on to how we address the causes and effects of dangerous climate breakdown.
How do we anchor ourselves in a world in which neither the narratives we are told nor the images we are shown can be trusted?
The growing number of legal cases is the result of the failure of the legislative and executive branches to craft a stable framework of environmental protections based upon the overwhelming preponderance of scientific research that even the oil companies have come to accept.
