What Is This Constant Argument That Doing the Right Thing Will Put People Out of Work?
Disclaimer: I try to see both sides of issues, but I’m
angry and this article is angry and I apologize for that.
My god, you hear it on every issue:
·
Stopping fracking
·
Shutting down oil wells
·
Plastic single-use bottles
·
Electric cars
·
Mining
·
Agricultural pollution
·
Over-fishing
·
Over-logging, and on and on.
As if it was a choice. As if simply not thinking
about how the planet and all its animals are disappearing as we trudge off to
the mall is going to solve itself.
Not to put too sharp an edge on it
folks, but already—right now—if we were to immediately
stop fucking up the planet, it’s already too late.
Too late to survive? Probably not, but already way too
late to continue to exist on the planet as we have always known it.
Lions and tigers and bears? Gone.
Most of the fish in the sea? Gone. Life in Miami, Seattle, New York, Los
Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and most of the great cities throughout the
world that are oceanside (think Venice)? Not gone, but unrecognizable
and unlivable as we knew them.
That’s now. That’s already a
done deal. That cannot be changed. We will have to live with that.
Will the air get cleaner? Yep. Renewables will take care of
that, but the oceans rising 6 to 20 feet is no longer controllable.
We argue about migration and are actually
ignorant enough to have that conversation. 80 million people alone
are going to leave Bangladesh—they’re not going to stand there and drown.
Two billion people throughout the world today are going to be displaced.
And we talk. We debate the Paris
Accord and call nations together to shake our finger at them for not reaching goals.
Goals that were not enough when we set them, twenty years ago.
Fucking politicians tell us they can’t do this, contribute
that, or undertake the other because jobs are at stake.
The house is burning and we’re arguing about jobs as
it falls to the ground in ashes. What are we going to do when the starving
arrive at our doors? Tell them we did it to save their jobs?
We’re so fucking stupid as a race
that we look out the window and think it’s nice to have a mild winter.
Corporations admire Amazon and cheer Jeff Bezos as the richest
man on the planet, while the planet is disappearing under our feet.
We actually
concern ourselves over whether Harvey Weinstein will get long enough in
prison, Lamar Jackson will take the Ravens to the Super Bowl next year and Great
Britain will be better off after Brexit.
We talk about that shit as though it still mattered.
And it does in many ways.
But good god almighty, we still
actually argue about whether the Green New Deal is a good thing
or a bad thing--and if that asshole, Donald Trump, is going to actually let
us have it.