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"Climate change is not so much an emergency as a festering injustice. Our ancestors did not end slavery by declaring an emergency and dreaming up artificial boundaries on “tolerable” slave numbers," says climate scientist Myles Allen. "They called it out for what it was..."
[Just like slavery, fossil fuel use is] "a spectacularly profitable industry, the basis of much prosperity at the time, something founded on a fundamental injustice."
slate.com/technology/201…
slate.com/technology/201…
As historian JF Mohout explains, "Fossil fuels now do the same work that used to be done by slaves and servants: they do our laundry, cook our food, transport us, entertain us, and do most of the hard work needed for our survival." theguardian.com/environment/20…
"Slavery came to be challenged and finally abolished when people became aware of an alternative. This suggests that we should concentrate our efforts on developing "green" technologies at the same time as reducing our consumption of fossil fuels," he continues.
Personally, I'm grateful for fossil fuels. They've brought us untold benefits. Yet just as we moved on from buggies and party-line phones, it's time to move on to energy sources that don't pollute our air + our water and don't produce heat-trapping gases.
So as Myles Allen concludes, "Please stop saying something globally bad is going to happen in 2030. Bad stuff is already happening and every half-degree of warming matters." Yes, it's us, and it's bad -- but there are solutions. Our future is in our hands.
