Courtesy, Leyla Acaroglu Now that a great many corporations, even oil companies, have acknowledged the existence and danger of human-caused climate change, you'd think that progress might occur in reducing worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. And you'd be wrong. Why? Because the next step after denial in the capitalist handbook is not positive action. Oh no, there are many more ways to wriggle away from responsibility. After denial, in a profit-driven-crazy world, comes obfuscation.
A heckuva word, obfuscation. Synonyms for the verb obfuscate are bewilder, trivialize, perplex, confuse, muddle, subvert, blur, obscure, stupefy and darken. Hooray for obfuscation, the PR hack's best friend. See campaign to defend cigarette industry and Trump press secretaries.
Specifically, with climate change, you admit the problem but assert both the economic infeasibility of not burning fossil fuels and the intransigence of path-dependent consumers struggling to put food on their children or breakfast tables on school buses or something homey like that and then you call for the government to build really tall and really cool sea walls around coastal cities and/or perpetually seed the stratosphere with sun-blocking sulfur. What could possibly go wrong? Chemistry and engineering to the rescue!
Or admit the problem and then trumpet a series of trivial sustainability measures. Tin-can recycling, water-stingy shrubbery, minor research project into kelp or algae as source for next-gen jet fuel, that kind of thing. At minimum have your doe-eyed sustainability officer say the word sustainable a lot. Like, in every sentence.
Or announce that you're swearing off carbon, for sure, by some distant date. 2050 has a good, round ring to it. Eversource, my local provider of natural gas, has dared to go carbon neutral by 2030! In perusing their slick materials, you may notice that this calculation doesn't technically include the carbon-intensive product -- a fossil fuel! -- which they sell. But then again it's not their fault you buy it to keep from freezing in the winter.
A heckuva word, obfuscation. Synonyms for the verb obfuscate are bewilder, trivialize, perplex, confuse, muddle, subvert, blur, obscure, stupefy and darken. Hooray for obfuscation, the PR hack's best friend. See campaign to defend cigarette industry and Trump press secretaries.
Specifically, with climate change, you admit the problem but assert both the economic infeasibility of not burning fossil fuels and the intransigence of path-dependent consumers struggling to put food on their children or breakfast tables on school buses or something homey like that and then you call for the government to build really tall and really cool sea walls around coastal cities and/or perpetually seed the stratosphere with sun-blocking sulfur. What could possibly go wrong? Chemistry and engineering to the rescue!
Or admit the problem and then trumpet a series of trivial sustainability measures. Tin-can recycling, water-stingy shrubbery, minor research project into kelp or algae as source for next-gen jet fuel, that kind of thing. At minimum have your doe-eyed sustainability officer say the word sustainable a lot. Like, in every sentence.
Or announce that you're swearing off carbon, for sure, by some distant date. 2050 has a good, round ring to it. Eversource, my local provider of natural gas, has dared to go carbon neutral by 2030! In perusing their slick materials, you may notice that this calculation doesn't technically include the carbon-intensive product -- a fossil fuel! -- which they sell. But then again it's not their fault you buy it to keep from freezing in the winter.
He shoots, he...causes climate change? Or lie, strategically. Label your dirty-toxic product as green or organic or carbon-neutral or sustainably sourced from the purest, natural ingredients gathered by hand in Patagonia. Shoulders up, two faces straight, the bigger the lie the better. Today's example of this tactic is reported in a story about climate-destroying hockey rink refrigerants in the excellent Inside Climate News.
One more, and it's a doozy. Publicly accept the damning realities of climate change and then pay big bucks to denialist think tanks and shadow groups to spread misinformation and lobby against climate legislation. When questioned by some puny congressperson on some puny congressional committee, give it the old dodge and weave. Gibber platitudes, don't give direct answers.
You see, Congress isn't the best place for outright lying, what with that swearing on the Bible thing. The one-and-only Bible, by the way, which asserts the Dominion of Man over nature, and just ignore all that sharing and caring and self-mortification stuff, that hullabaloo regarding sins reverberating for seven generations, not to mention the commie-hokum about throwing profit mongers out of the temple. All added by liberals later on. Probably Obama.
One more, and it's a doozy. Publicly accept the damning realities of climate change and then pay big bucks to denialist think tanks and shadow groups to spread misinformation and lobby against climate legislation. When questioned by some puny congressperson on some puny congressional committee, give it the old dodge and weave. Gibber platitudes, don't give direct answers.
You see, Congress isn't the best place for outright lying, what with that swearing on the Bible thing. The one-and-only Bible, by the way, which asserts the Dominion of Man over nature, and just ignore all that sharing and caring and self-mortification stuff, that hullabaloo regarding sins reverberating for seven generations, not to mention the commie-hokum about throwing profit mongers out of the temple. All added by liberals later on. Probably Obama.
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