 |
| AT 1 MICRODEGREE AN HOUR , IT MAY TAKE 80 GENERATIONS OF FROGS TO BOIL A POT OF WATER |
Near-identical post- COP 21 pep talks in Science, The Nation, The Guardian, Nature, Grist & Mother Jones testify that enthusiasm for the party line remains compulsory. PR firms on all sides of the Climate Wars have found a Best Practice : they can maximize their income by abolishing spontaneity in favor of permanent political choreography. Striving to stay on - message, Hillary Clinton & Ted Cruz, Tom Fuller and Bill McKibben have all been joined at the hip in their utter predictability.
But loud as the music may be, climate change does not dance to anyone's tune. The PR shills whose shillings stem from Lord Lawson's friends and energy barons from Alberta to Australia can no more slow down radiative forcing by modern civilization than their polemic opponents can speed it up.
This planet's most complex dynamic system remains as ponderous as it is politically indifferent. Even when mankind grows to 9 billion souls, there will still be a billion pounds of atmosphere per capita, and the still vaster thermal inertia of Earth's hydrosphere and crust will continue to dictate the rate of man made climate forcing ecopoliticians insist on presenting as an existential threat.
This does not justify conservative indifference to conservation as a moral imperative, but socialists from Sanders to Sarkozy might as well try explaining the acceleration of history to a tree sloth as attempt to persuade nature to pick up the tempo of warming to a rate ordinary voters can detect inside a four year term. Not even Public Television can save the climate debate from the reality of ennui.
