So, you still think we’re not utterly fucked as a species? I offer two exhibits.
Exhibit A
Namibia is having the worst drought in 30 years. At the time of UNICEF’s video (below), about 1/3 of Namibians were facing food insecurity. Crops have failed and for the 25%-40% of Namibians who are subsistence farmers that’s a big frigging deal. People are dying and as always happens with these disasters, there’s not enough money to go round. Even more acute disasters that happen much quicker (eg. famines that get in the news) rarely attract the full amount of pledges required. To say nothing of this – how many hours of our news is devoted to what’s happening in Namibia? And of course the people who are suffering are going without food while there’s probably still enough food in the region to go around. They just can’t afford it.
But of course their plight has nothing to do with climate change, right?
Exhibit B
In late August, Glenn Beck went on a campaign in his “news” company to bravely take a stand against…recycling, after an employee took some steps in that area. It’s ok to recycle if you care about the environment, Beck said (in the words of Cenk Uygur, is he not merciful?). But his official company policy is that climate change is a “steaming pile of crap” and if anyone takes ANY environmental action because of climate change, they’re fired.
As an aside, Glenn Beck is exactly the type of person who’d cry McCarthyism about anything on the left he can get his hands on. Also I wonder what he thinks of hate crime legislation and taking people’s motivation into account?
Now, each exhibit by itself is bad enough. But take them together. Beck isn’t just some buffoon (or rather, not just some buffoon). He actually has reach and an indirect influence on the political process. The lies spewed forth on Beck’s channel contribute to exactly the type of inaction that will harm – and kill – many people around the world over the next few decades.
These will be people whose suffering the likes of Glenn Beck won’t know or care about. And because of that, we are utterly fucked as a species, both in the descriptive and in the moral sense of the word.
0 Comments