We know it’s getting worse; we’re not climate deniers. We’re well informed and aware of the facts. And yet we go about our lives as if nothing has changed. We live the same way we lived five years ago, before the wealth of new climate science confirming that the situation is worse than first thought. Maybe we travel even more than before or live in a bigger house than we did then. (Guilty on both counts.)
What’s wrong with us?
We’re obeying the hush-hush rule on climate change. When the President can’t even utter the word climate in his State of the Union speech, at a time when climate change presents emergency levels of economic, health, and national security risks—and that’s just in this country, never mind the millions of people in other parts of the world whose homes and lives are already lost and endangered—you know something is seriously wrong. Even Stewart and Colbert seldom devote time to it.
Climate change—the elephant in the room. The one thing we don’t talk about—not to one another, and especially not to our children.