KENNEBEC JOURNAL • November 7, 2021
One can no longer credibly deny that climate change is real, human-caused, and a threat to our civilization. The fossil fuel interests and the front groups, organizations and mouthpieces-for-hire they fund have been forced to turn to other tactics in their effort to keep us dependent on fossil fuels. These include deflection (focusing attention entirely on individual behavioral change so as to steer the societal discourse away from a discussion of the needed policies and systematic changes), division (getting climate advocates fighting with each rather than speaking with a united voice), and the promotion of doomism (convincing some climate advocates that it’s too late to do anything anyway). But the D-word du jour is delay. We’ve become all too familiar with the lexicon employed in its service: “adaptation,” “resilience,” “geoengineering” and “carbon capture.” These words offer the soothing promise of action, but all fail to address the scale of the problem. ~ Michael E. Mann, author of “The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back our Planet”