Come November, when the White House hopefully returns to a belief in science, climate change might regain some serious attention from governance on high. Enough political stars may just possibly align sufficiently enough to avert an apocalypse that will make COVID hell feel like a minor malady. With Trump gone all will be well.

That scenario sounds most promising except for the inconvenient truth that so much of the promise of the Green New Deal still rests on a market reliant realization of its goals. The economy ultimately comes first. That’s the Catch-22 of our environmental angst, what Pogo posited as “We have met the enemy and he is us.” It’s our Lord Voldemort like unspeakable fear of not continuing down what’s becoming more and more clearly assessed as an eco-energy dead end. A half-century of hard-won and heavily invested eco-awareness now refuses to pivot towards an even more difficult sales pitch. No one wants to admit they’re misguided, especially those used to pointing fingers at others further lost in environmental denial. The controversial truth-telling of “Planet of The Humans,” Michael Moore’s latest documentarian polemic, has recently succeeded in calling out the supposed green economic genie from its touted “politically correct” bottle. Corporate controlled renewable energy just isn’t sustainable as advertised.

We need to concede that reality if we’re serious in professing environmental concern, immediately implementing radical energy reduction instead of pursuing incrementally achieved “efficiencies.” Solar, wind and hydro need to be roundly exposed for their hidden planetary harm rather than being unquestioningly championed, or they will ultimately be judged harshly as yet another means of environmental disregard. Acknowledging their long-term impact as far worse than nuclear generation isn’t a Judas clarion call for a return to the falsehood of “clean nuclear” but a wake-up call to the largely false “remedies” of any continuance of our insatiable energy addiction. The planet can’t endure any more failed Green solutions seeking to support an unending energy growth based economics.

We need game-changing actual leadership, not another paternal bedtime story where somehow, someday, we’ll get our act together in the eleventh hour. We need 24-7, above-the-fold, prime time coverage of the magnitude of this threat until our political climate changes. Until the bravely sounded warnings of a rising eco-critique is recognized as more than the media oddity of a prophetic Swedish student activist. Her apocalyptic alarm is set within this decade, dismissing all economically convenient political calculi. She bluntly compares current eco-politics to “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” where no one wants to hear the naked truth. No level of Green good intentions will ever make unsustainable practices actually earth-friendly. “Even debating it risks doing more harm than good, as it sends a signal that changes needed are possible within today’s societies.” Truth to power, Green or otherwise. Michael Moore and Greta Thunberg are just two of many anathema messengers now in the crosshairs of a Green status quo unwilling to cede that even “good” energy sources are harmful.

We need leadership that will ration energy at whatever reduction is necessary to achieve planetary healing. At once. At whatever economic cost. We can no longer afford the option of believing technology will still somehow save us from its causation of planetary imperilment. That narrative makes good political branding, but only repackages the same bad actors whose continuation of power could care less how its energy dependence is derived. It’s time to pull the plug on that race to an environmental bottom.

A surreal unseen enemy has unmasked many of our constructs of denial. Our systems of healthcare and justice are long last being seen for what they are. The zero-sum foundation of our social and economic systems is finally being acknowledged as a concept needing fundamental redesign. As was so instructive in past advancements in civil rights, environmental justice needs to keep its “eyes on the prize.” Hopefully this pandemic will awaken us to its own profoundly instructive takeaways: Like it or not, like each other or not, we’re in this together, worldwide. Treating symptoms without fully comprehending the disease isn’t best practices. Forced human cessation of societal “normality” has an immediate and profound environmental benefit.

Those who cannot bear to wear a mask, or hold haircuts and tattoos as necessities, do not bode well for things to come. The immensity of impending climate challenges will require true fulfillment of the meaning of “heroic” and “resilience.”

Gary Anderson Bath.

Comments are not available on this story.

filed under: