People are very polarized, as you notice each day now. The newest, widening division is about climate.
People are defensive about “man made” climate change because the implication is that we are all guilty. People can’t face the idea of being blamed, and in fact, they shouldn’t.
Certainly, some are more guilty than others, but this is victim blaming. As in the opiate crisis, the many, many dead were judged for their habits, and often, their “culture” for far too long. Let’s point the finger instead to the dealers.
It is the dealers of the world who profit most, literally, from our addiction to fossil fuels. It was recently revealed that the top twenty polluting corporations of the world not only grow rich on toxic fuel, they are the origin of fully one third of all greenhouse gases spewing into your air each and every day.
Not only that, but they actively played crucial roles in the divide you see today. By undermining the science and blowing the smoke of confusion over public understanding, they have poisoned the well of human discourse, all the while that they poison the planet.
All this denial and all this dirty stuff is the real reason you are afraid to sit down at the table with your Aunt Mary, and racist, Uncle Bob. If you don’t yet realize that racism, sexism, inequality, disproportionate wealth, and climate justice are related, then you just have to talk even more openly to those whose opinions you cannot yet understand.
The IMF is proposing a higher tax on carbon. But this does nothing to lift up the real victims and give them empowerment. It just seeks to tax those least responsible who are working people dependent on energy to buy all that plastic wrapped food.
Let’s not let them do it. It’s really, really important to our civilization that we unite against the real baddies. And, that’s why you have to keep love and conversation alive at the Thanksgiving Day Table.
Christyl Rivers Ecopsychology 