"Politicians like to tell people what they want to hear - and what they want to hear is what won't happen."
-Paul Samuelson
Delusion and folly.
They did not expose your iniquity
So as to restore your fortunes,
But prophesied to you oracles
Of delusion and deception.
(1) The word of the LORD came to me: (2) O mortal, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who prophesy; say to those who prophesy out of their own imagination: Hear the word of the LORD! (3) Thus said the Lord GOD: Woe to the degenerate prophets, who follow their own fancy, without having had a vision! (4) Your prophets, O Israel, have been like jackals among ruins. (5) You did not enter the breaches and repair the walls for the House of Israel, that they might stand up in battle in the day of the LORD. (6) They prophesied falsehood and lying divination; they said, “Declares the LORD,” when the LORD did not send them, and then they waited for their word to be fulfilled. (7) It was false visions you prophesied and lying divination you uttered, saying, “Declares the LORD,” when I had not spoken. (8) Assuredly, thus said the Lord GOD: Because you speak falsehood and prophesy lies, assuredly, I will deal with you—declares the Lord GOD. (9) My hand will be against the prophets who prophesy falsehood and utter lying divination. They shall not remain in the assembly of My people, they shall not be inscribed in the lists of the House of Israel, and they shall not come back to the land of Israel. Thus shall you know that I am the Lord GOD. (10) Inasmuch as they have misled My people, saying, “It is well,” when nothing is well, daubing with plaster the flimsy wall which the people-a were building, (11) say to those daubers of plaster: It shall collapse; a driving rain shall descend—and you, O great hailstones, shall fall—and a hurricane wind shall rend it. (12) Then, when the wall collapses, you will be asked, “What became of the plaster you daubed on?” (13) Assuredly, thus said the Lord GOD: In My fury I will let loose hurricane winds; in My anger a driving rain shall descend, and great hailstones in destructive fury. (14) I will throw down the wall that you daubed with plaster, and I will raze it to the ground so that its foundation is exposed; and when it falls, you shall perish in its midst; then you shall know that I am the LORD. (15) And when I have spent My fury upon the wall and upon those who daubed it with plaster, I will say to you: Gone is the wall and gone are its daubers, (16) the prophets of Israel who prophesy about Jerusalem and see a vision of well-being for her when there is no well-being—declares the Lord GOD.
You chiefs of the House of Israel,
Who detest justice
And make crooked all that is straight, (10) Who build Zion with crime,
Jerusalem with iniquity! (11) Her rulers judge for gifts,
Her priests give rulings for a fee,
And her prophets divine for pay;
Yet they rely upon the LORD, saying,
“The LORD is in our midst;
No calamity shall overtake us.” (12) Assuredly, because of you
Zion shall be plowed as a field,
And Jerusalem shall become heaps of ruins,
And the Temple Mount
A shrine in the woods.
One of the hardest parts of writing about the history of the climate crisis was stumbling across warnings from the 1950s, 60s and 70s, musing about how things might get bad sometime after the year 2000 if no one did anything about fossil fuels. They still had hope back then. Reading that hope today hurts.
We are now living our ancestors’ nightmares, and it didn’t have to be this way. If we are looking to apportion blame, it is those who deliberately peddled doubt that should be first in line. But it is also worth looking at the cultures of scientific work that have developed over centuries, some of which could do with an update. The doubt-mongers manipulated positive forces in science – such as scepticism – for their own ends, but they also made use of other resources, exacerbating generational divides, exploiting the scientific community’s tendency to avoid drama, and steering notions about who were legitimate political partners (eg governments) and who were not (activists)...
When climate fear starts to grip, it is worth remembering that we have knowledge that offers us a chance to act. We could, all too easily, be sitting around thinking: “The weather’s a bit weird today. Again.”
If all these scenarios appear to be either too unrealistic or too unpleasant, I invite readers to write their own. Here’s the one stipulation: it must involve drastic change. At this point, there’s simply no possible future that averts dislocation. The horrific fires this fall in California and Oregon, which were, in a manner of speaking, stoked by climate change, serve as a preview of the world to come. As Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A. & M. University, recently put it, “If you don’t like all of the climate disasters happening in 2020, I have some bad news for you about the rest of your life.” Billions of people will have to dramatically change the way they live or the world will change dramatically or some combination of the two. My experience reporting on climate change, which now spans almost twenty years, has convinced me that the most extreme outcomes are, unfortunately, among the most likely. As the warnings have grown more dire and the consequences of warming more obvious, emissions have only increased that much faster. Until the coronavirus hit, they were tracking the highest of the so-called pathways studied by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. If this continues, the I.P.C.C. projects that, by the end of this century, global temperatures will have risen by almost eight degrees Fahrenheit. Let’s just say that at that point no amount of outdoor air-conditioning will be sufficient.