The United States government has now officially embraced climate change as a catastrophe in the making. Only it contends that the catastrophe is now inevitable no matter what humans do…and so, we should do nothing at all since whatever we do won’t matter much.
That, at least, was the justification offered for freezing fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles after 2020. For the National Transportation Safety Board which issued a report containing the justification, the phrase “Every little bit helps” has morph into “Every little bit won’t matter.”
The problem, of course, is that if this becomes the attitude of everyone trying to mitigate climate change, almost nothing will get done.
But the report does highlight one very important problem for those who desperately want to address climate change: Climate change is no longer a “crisis.” As French thinker Bruno Latour reminds us in his book Facing Gaia, climate change is not really a “crisis,” at least not anymore. A crisis comes and goes. Climate change isn’t going anywhere except toward a place which is much worse. It isn’t going to pass. It is going to endure.
That is the hard part about it. Addressing climate change does not mean taking temporary emergency measures which can be relaxed after the crisis has passed. Addressing climate change means making profound and permanent changes in the way we live. That is, of course, why doing much of anything is opposed vehemently by interests dependent on fossil fuels for their livelihoods such as the auto industry and, of course, the oil industry. There’s no going back to the way things were after the crisis passes because it’s not going to pass.
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