In the UK, Leavers accuse Remainers of using Project Fear against Brexit. It’s a smart and thus far successful move because fear-based arguments tend to be negative, while Leavers present a positive message of hope. One of these messages must be false however. The global climate activists also use Project Fear against anyone disputing their message and/or its urgency.
Project Fear is still accelerating its key message: the words climate change became climate crisis, and now climate catastrophe. However, a potential catastrophe in the year 2300 does not feel like a catastrophe today (eg, BBC, Independent, IPCC, WaPo). Project Fear is undermining its key message through its choice of semantics. Also see my recent blog après nous le déluge (2).
The use of fear will cause three types of (animal and human) behaviour:
1. Fight: the Urgenda court case against the Dutch government is now at the Supreme Court;
2. Flight: my recent relocation from sub sea level to a much higher elevation;
3. Freeze: the numbness and après nous le déluge attitude of the majority population.
Dutch scientist and President of Wageningen University & Research, Louise Fresco, wrote a recent – and highly recommended – article in NRC about sub #1: Fight. I will translate her Dutch opinion for Saturday’s blog. She claims that there is a lot of consensus on the existence of climate change but not on its solutions. She is smart enough to avoid the pitfall of mentioning causes.
The climate debate on its causes dwarfs the debate on its solutions. Some scientists are already proposing extremely dangerous solutions that involve geo or climate engineering; also see my June 2019 blog. Some recent examples: how to cool a planet with extraterrestrial dust (NYT), could space mirrors stop global warming? (Live Science).
Such extreme solutions could (indeed) cause climate catastrophes, like the Toba catastrophe theory, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event of some 66 million years ago, and other mass extinction events. CNN-2019: “A new study found extreme changes in the atmosphere killed almost 100% of life on Earth about 2 billion years ago.”
The ongoing alarmism of climate activists without offering solutions, either in time or at locations, is bound to cause apathy. Moreover, solutions are relatively simple, like relocating cities (eg, Jakarta) or moving another 250 million Chinese people from farms to cities to boost urbanisation (eg, BI-2019, Guardian-2017, NYT-2019).
There’s an ancient Dutch saying, angst is een slechte raadgever, which translates like fear is a poor counselor. It’s the essence of the opinion article by Louise Fresco (Saturday’s blog).
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” A quote from the 1965 science-fiction novel Dune by Frank Herbert, an American author.
Elevation (2001) by U2
artists, lyrics, video, Wiki-1, Wiki-2
Note: all markings (bold, italic, underlining) by LO unless stated otherwise
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