Thursday, October 19, 2017

Re:  Climate change, and Human response to it.

It's like my Dad. Doctors, friends, and even total strangers told him, "stop smoking, or it will kill you." He didn't. He said it was too hard to quit.  Finally, after a massive heart attack and triple bypass surgery, lying in a hospital bed, the surgeon standing over him said, "If you smoke any more, this will happen to you again, and I won't be able to save you." My Dad stopped smoking.   Evidently, it wasn't too hard to quit, after all. 

 I'm afraid it's going to be like that all the way. We know what we need to do. But, none of us really want to. Corporations think of the expense, individuals think of the inconvenience. We have the ability, but probably won't get serious about it until irreversible damage is done, and Nature smacks us down hard.  

Pseudoscience and antiscience are ways of ignoring the obvious.  I'm sure my Dad told himself that people were overreacting to bad press about the dangers of smoking.  He probably told himself that he was an exception, and would be fine.  Probably, with each pack of cigarettes, he thought, "I'll quit soon, before anything bad happens, but right now, I really need this."  He would got through the motions of quitting, without really quitting, and tell himself that at least he tried.

Humans.  For such an intelligent species, we can be awfully dumb.

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