It mysteriously leaps into your mouth. The ice cream is a lone spoonful left in an empty container. The chocolate chip cookies are gone – even though the grandkids haven’t visited for a week.
Where did they go? Could it be you?
Denial.
It can be a good thing. Psychologists consider denial a way to handle reality – if it doesn’t exist then it doesn’t matter. If the cheesecake “disappears” bite by bite, the pint of ice cream is down to one spoonful, and the cookie jar is emptied during a tense episode of Grace and Frankie, then that doesn’t matter much either.
Denial gets dangerous when a person uses it to eliminate reality completely. Like climate change deniers. They’re big trouble for all of us.
Climate change deniers ignore storms, floods, droughts, and fires. They ridicule science. The Guardian calls the U.S. a “hotbed of climate change denial,” reporting that America has more deniers than any other country except Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.
Hunker down with The Orange Man in the White House, famous for his claim that climate change is a “Chinese Hoax”. He works against climate action – opens public lands to oil drilling and mining, supports the fossil fuel industry, and cuts back critical environmental protections.
At the same time – while we’re not looking – he builds a wall to protect his golf resort in Ireland against rising seas caused by climate change.
Mr. Trump loves his walls.
The President has refused to spend nearly one billion dollars allocated by congress for clean energy projects, grants, and financial assistance. According to Gizmodo, he not only held back funds but “canceled a $46 million program for solar research and development.”
Maybe he was practicing for Ukraine?
In his State of the Union Speech, Mr. Trump announced that he will protect the environment by joining the “One Trillion Trees Initiative . . . to plant new trees in America and all around the world.”
Trees? This comes from the same cherry-vanilla freak who promotes logging in Alaska’s 16.7 million-acre Tongass National Forest – the largest intact temperate rainforest in North America.
Sadly, The Orange Man is not alone. Look around – too much of the world is led by climate change deniers like Australia Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro. Their countries are burning. As Climate Activist Greta Thunberg said about Earth, “our house is on fire.”
Billions of dollars are poured into misinformation and denial, strategically spread by fossil fuel interests. Consider people like Senator James Inhofe who took $2 million in political donations from the fossil fuel industry – while NOAH, in 2019, reported fourteen billion-dollar weather and climate disasters.
Maybe it’s fake truth?
Ironically, it costs less money to mitigate climate change now than deal with the inevitable disasters later. Who cares? Deniers have a lot of dough to refill the cookie jar.
Exxon/Mobile knew for decades that fossil fuels create climate change. Now, of course, they say “we believe the risks of climate change are real.”
When no one is looking, The Union of Concerned Scientists found Exxon/Mobile gives millions of dollars to climate change denier organizations and lobbyists. The others – BP, Shell, Chevron, and Koch, are not much better. They present themselves in green advertising while supporting the opposite.
We’re victims of decades of political lobbying, misinformation, and denials of proven scientific evidence. Climate change deniers are the minority yet they control us – call heroic activists like Greta Thunberg “mentally ill” or me (I’ve written two books and countless blogs about climate change) a “commie left-wing propagandist.”
Now change is in the air.
You don’t have to deny your cheesecake, ice cream, or chocolate chip cookies any more.
Organizations like Elders for Climate Action, Extinction Rebellion, Greenpeace, and Sierra are getting heard. Politicians are adding climate change to their platforms. Individuals – like you and me – are eating less meat, rejecting one-use plastics, and going solar.
Hopefully, climate change deniers are headed for extinction.
