How can we stimulate the audience to deal with climate change?
Commentators want to provide answers, solutions, best choices. But I want to ask a question. How can we get more people more fired up about the environment so that we improve it, fast?
I’ve written and spoken repeatedly about the environment. Somehow it keeps getting worse. I was at a party where people were urging me to write and speak more. I said I’d been trying. A young woman college student who was there mentioned that she’d had a letter on the environment published in the Washington Post. Bless her. The ship of state takes a lot of tugs pulling constantly to make it change course. But how can we get our ship of state to change our course?
I and others have tried to scare people with the facts, the real damage that environmental change is actually doing to real, living Americans and creating extreme risks in our own lifetimes for all of us.[1] Many of us have been flooded, burned, denied water, clean air or temperatures our bodies could withstand. Some have lost their homes, farms, businesses. Others have lost their lives, health, families and other loved ones. But people respond by saying it is too scary to think about, so they don’t.
I have shared with you the organizations[2] that I’ve supported[3] for many decades. Serious organizations of scientists testing and retesting in every conceivable way to understand what is happening to us. And I’ve met some of the people – pretty serious folk who aren’t playing games with their research or with PR about how they describe it.
And I’ve tried to describe things that we and people like us[4] can do to improve the environment – the solar panels some of us have, the cars that have reduced the fuel we burn, the ways we could build houses that are environmentally more efficient[5] or the political,[6] legal and other steps we could support that would make us much more efficient,[7] and the necessity of getting out of oil and gas.[8]
I’ve just footnoted a few because I keep coming back to the environment. I don’t get reports so I don’t know how many of you have taken my suggestions seriously or have other equally good solutions or organizations to support. But somehow, the world’s handbaskets still seem to be carrying us to hell.
So I’ve outlined the facts, the groups, the policies and the self-help chores, but what am I missing? Is there anything I could say that would get more people putting their shoulders to the environmental wheel and pushing ever harder until we stop destroying the world we live in for the people we cherish?
You can reach me easily by leaving a comment on my blog.
[1] Is humanity mad (October 25, 2022).
[2] Environment – How do we Save a Livable Earth (April 12, 2022).
[3] Heal the Climate (December 1, 2020).
[4] What we can do to stop global warming (July 16, 2019)
[5] Passive Solar (December 12, 2022).
[6] Global warming demands a BTU tax (January 8, 2013).
[7] Suits for Environmental Damage (May 9, 2023)
[8] Not how much solar we use but how much fuel we burn (July 4, 2023)
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.