Jeff Rudin works at the Alternative Information & Development Centre (AIDC)
Mass paralysis among the climate-conscious public might be the reason the world’s leaders get away with doing little of what they say they know must be done. With no immediate political consequences, climate change’s long suicide is their preferred option. We must replace confidence in the COPs with a consistent rejection of them.
Sometimes being right is the wrong outcome. Many people confidently predicted the failure of COP26, but there can be no joy in being right about this. When a British Conservative cabinet minister, Alok Sharma, serving as COP26 president, is almost reduced to tears by COP’s failure, panic is not an unwarranted response. Unless, that is, one agrees with Peter Willis’s passionately argued article in which he asks Daily Maverick readers to grow up. Like the mature response to unavoidable death, he effectively invites us to succumb to the inevitability of the climate catastrophe and to focus instead on how we express our humanity in those profoundly traumatic conditions.
I can’t agree with my friend Peter. More accurately, I don’t want to agree. Our species has consciousness, agency. Death is a biological given, unlike climate change. We…
