The governments of this world, both national but also regional and local, will never give up aspects of their power and autonomy, a necessary prerequisite I propose to an effective AGW mitigations scheme.

So all this sound and fury over AGW doesn’t really mean much.

So, call me a doomer. I’m trying to deal with why humans act like we do.

Changing people is difficult to impossible.

This is why the “addiction” model of CO2 production is a good one, if not so empowering as we wished it would be.

Let’s look at this screaming headline (from HuffPo):

Hillary Clinton: Climate Change Calls For ‘Mass Movement’

It’s an AP story, ran in many outlets. A story like this will of course draw quite a bit of attention; blowback occurs in the usual fringe-o-sphere:

Clinton Wants ‘Mass Movement’ On Climate Change

But the problem is the blowback doesn’t just happen among the fringe.

“Politics” now, among the digitally connected, is an elaborate form of entertainment. It’s a spectacle. That’s why we love those “debates” that the GOP put on every few years. We (Americans, but others too) love a spectacle.

I am convinced the #1 reason it is so difficult to make climate change a politically urgent issue is because we all know, in the back of our head, that our lives are short and we really care more about other things. We care about April 15th and paying taxes. We care about if our jobs will still be around next year. We care about a physical ailment one of our family members may be suffering.

We really don’t care about people far away, in space and time.

This is why I now resent the empty gestures of politicians, who are trying to borrow the legitimacy that science still has among the general population, in trying to position themselves as some champion for a climate change cause.

It is all emptiness, a show, in this case to manipulate people.