Extinction Rebellion

I grew up in Los Angeles, and knew, from choking on the smog, that internal combustion engines and factories were bad. I could see land being paved over to build more houses and freeways. I saw that more and more people added to the population made for crowding, annoyances and road rage. I lived through fires and floods caused by humans building in the mountains. I saw dead animals on the side of the road every day.

I knew, on a gut level, that destroying the environment in service of humans was bad. I think that most people have been through similar experiences, and that the reaction to the environmental destruction after WW2 was an uprising of angry Americans, which led to the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the EPA and the Endangered Species Act.

Clever, then, of our overlords, to change the emphasis to the invisible, instead of the visible, with the overwhelming emphasis on climate change, and to tell us that the financial sector can fix it, instead of laws which outlaw the razing of forests, the vacuuming of the oceans, the manufacture of plastic and herbicides and pesticides, and other very visible effects of human destruction on our planet.

Let us argue about an invisible gas, instead of the very visible island of plastic in the Pacific, and hedge all claims about weather events, while orangutans in Indonesia are burned to death, so that humans can plant palm oil trees. Let us stop talking about the Amazonian rainforest being burned, and a million species being wiped out, and oil spills and dead zones in the ocean, and start talking about how Wall Street will protect us from capitalism.

Clever, indeed.