The Big Fat Fake Division
Category : blog , Energy , Environment , Politics
It’s the most familiar tactic in the history of manipulation-divide and conquer. The corporatized political parties that have been trading the football of the US Government back and forth for decades have successfully engaged the entire republic in a non-debate about something that has no divisive features. Their strategy of pitting sides against one another is about as sophisticated as a teenager angling for the car by getting Mom and Dad to fight about who caused the scratch on the door. Embarrassingly, far too many of us keep falling for it.
The Environment is Not An “ISM”
Our planet, the water, the air, the animal and plant life, is not an institution, a theory, a political invention, or any other “ism.” It is a very concrete, finite location and resources. It is the context in which all human activity, good, bad, and neutral, must take place. Living consumes and makes waste. Modern, human life has added a layer of consumption and waste production that can’t be automatically re-incorporated into Earth’s natural cycles. We continually convert a certain amount of the Earth’s matter, into permanently unusable, sometimes even dangerous, waste. That waste is accurately called pollution, a now-old-fashioned word, too clear and useful to be in favor today.
We all know what pollution is and why we don’t want it. It makes living on Earth a bad experience. When it builds up in the air or water or soil we get sick. Everybody knows it’s bad. No one is confused or undecided. No one would rather live in pollution. No one prefers a river with raw sewage spilling into it to one without. But guess what! By changing the language to “climate change” and framing the debate around whether or not it’s caused by human activity, the corporate interests that would pollute freely for profit, distracted us all. Worse, we’re not even debating climate change, or even its causes any more. We’ve devolved into a useless non‑dialogue about climate change DENIAL! Denial is not an issue. It’s a pretense that something doesn’t exist. Talk about talking about nothing!
Sincere Language
But what happens when we call things by reasonably accurate terms, instead of manipulative spin yammer? Replace “climate change” with “planet-wide heating.” Now, instead of a vague, meaningless phrase, we have a fair description of what is actually happening. Instead of arguing about whether society should manage and restrain things that may be turning up the heat, let’s focus on the fact that those same activities simply pollute. Heating up or not, we’ve spent four decades proving that we can choose whether or not to make our planet a filthy, dirty one, or try and clean up after ourselves. Why would we turn back and choose pollution now? We wouldn’t. That’s why the profiteering exploiters prefer we never pose the question that way.
Their argument was, ‘People don’t cause global warming, so forget about protecting the environment and let’s exploit without limits, because money.’ By this logic, if you are making breakfast and you drop the two eggs you were going to scramble, you should throw the other ten eggs on the floor too. Rational adults rejected this idiotic argument so the profiteers now respond with denial, like a three-year-old having a pout.
Planet-wide heating is not good news, but whether our actions can avert it or not, we still have to live here for the foreseeable future. And since we do, why would any sincere, rational person agree to end the limits on pollution, or abandon recycling? We wouldn’t and we don’t.