My friend Collin Maessen of the Realsceptic blog caught up with Katharine Hayhoe at AGU last month.
Below, Hayhoe and others answer the question, what would you say to Donald Trump?
My friend Collin Maessen of the Realsceptic blog caught up with Katharine Hayhoe at AGU last month.
Below, Hayhoe and others answer the question, what would you say to Donald Trump?
Thanks for these Peter. Good words from good people.
To get Trump’s attention one needs to point to the fact that [1] renewable energy creates more jobs; and [2] burning fossil fuels is going to cost us bigtime.
Too many people in Trump’s environs look at the environment as a “nice to have” luxury which we cannot afford right now, not a serious bread and butter issue. Truly doubtful whether science or anything theoretical will not be dismissed at first glance.
No, to get Trump’s attention you’d have to convince the people who run the fossil fuel corporations that they can make more money shifting to renewables, while not losing anything on stranded fossil assets.
Too many people in Trump’s environs look at the environment and see a “Black Box”, an object they can’t see inside because their infancies deprived them of empathy–the ability see other beings as subjective rather than as objects. They see something that is “alive” (that is, moving) but because they can’t understand it or tell what it’s going to do (to them) it terrifies them. Because they’re unable to tell what it really is, they project all kinds of things onto it–their lack of empathy, above all, since that’s their primary quality; and because of that, all the things that go along with a lack of empathy–fear (even terror), grief, suspicion (even paranoia) and of course all-consuming rage because of all those others. Those are their feelings about the black box of nature and other beings but they think those emotions are coming from others because they can’t tolerate the many ramifications of the emotions being their own.
All that makes them determined to destroy others, and nature. The more they act on their lack of empathy, especially towards other humans, the more they find that lack coming back at them; IOW, people get defensive, even preemptively aggressive. The people we’re talking about, those in Trump’s environs, imagine a cruel and heartless world (because their lack keeps them from sensing anything else) and because of that they go about creating that world. That world reinforces their belief in it; their actions reinforce the world they imagine and it’s off to the races.
So their lack of empathy is an addiction.
The first rule of addiction is that you can never get enough of the wrong thing– (the right thing in this case being empathy, especially as part of psychotherapeutic treatment). So their actions will never stop unless someone stops them–physically, therapeutically, financially, politically… They absolutely will destroy the biosphere and every living being if we don’t stop them. We have maybe 5 years left to do that by eliminating their weapons–fossil and fissile fuels, chemical industrial agriculture, 19th century industry using 21st century tech, and most unfortunate of all, the insights of psychological science twisted into cattle prods and other manipulative torture devices.
Those people don’t give a shit about jobs for losers (ie, non-millionaires). it’s easier for them to lie about it and say they’re bringing back coal and wildly inflating the number of jobs in fossil and fissile fuels. And they certainly aren’t going to stop using weapons because they’re effective. It’s up to us.