My brother from another mother.

[K-Dog]

Are the Climate Doomers Right?

[K-Dog]

A paradigm shift means the abandonment of the beliefs, values, facts, and assumptions upon which you've built everything. If we shift our paradigm, then everything we've done in the past becomes suspect. At least, so we need to go a different route. So far, we're unwilling to entertain the serious thinking and actions that would be required to go that different route.

Let's assume we do think that we're in a desperate situation. Then clearly, right now, we should be rationing fossil fuel to those essential uses for which there are no immediate substitutes. Food production is one example. We should be taking every measure possible to reduce our need for energy. That's the discounting problem of the human mind: better to enjoy the short-term benefits of low-cost housing than the long-term benefits of survival by taking the painful steps necessary to ensure the latter.

So yeah, we're in a hell of a mess. I've contacted every single major environmental organization in Canada that is focused on energy and climate, and they won't listen to any of this. It's all about the Green New Deal and the unlimited potential of abundantly cheap electrical and wind power. In Canada, the more the bottom imposes on the top to do the things to support what the bottom wants, you have that kind of a symbiotic relationship. We have to have top-down policies to enable ordinary people to engage in the kind of lifestyles and community existences that move us forward. So it's neither top-down exclusively nor bottom-up exclusively. They have to come together in some way.

Democracies only work when you have a politically engaged, intelligent, well-informed population insisting on change. I have to say that I've tried to get versions of this particular perspective in the Globe and Mail and a couple of other national publications online. I've sent a version of it to The Guardian. None of these mainstream publications want to touch it. It's simply taboo.

In that sense, I think there's a huge blockage here in getting an alternative version of reality. I'm not saying that I'm absolutely right about everything, but people need to understand the domain that we're dealing with here in a much better and more comprehensive way.

Bill Rees

https://www.postcarbon.org/our-people/william-rees/