Diamond-Cut Life

Far and away my most-read piece in the past week has been The Psychology Of Naysayers On Global Warming.  I posit in it that denial, cognitive dissonance and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) are driving some people’s irrational refusal to believe global warming is real.

But I actually like another writet’s approach to the topic of naysaying better than my own. Andrée Zaleska penned the piece at Grist that I commented on that then attracted readers to my Naysayers article.  It’s called “Climate Deniers, Hold Your Fire’, and what I love about Andree’s open letter to climate deniers is that it finds common ground and at least one area of agreement with them. It is also non-judgmental and empathetic. Here are some excerpts.

I am speaking for the activists, the scientists, the writers and pundits who keep throwing this climate change thing in your faces. We are absolutely, 100% with you, and though you perceive a conflict of interests, political or existential or otherwise, there is NO conflict.  We do not want this, we do not want to believe this, and we would give anything in the world to be wrong.

Every fiber of our being tells us that this shouldn’t happen, that it’s inconsistent with a loving God, or with a theory of evolution that states that a species wants above all to survive, or just with the basic horse-sense that people will never do anything to endanger themselves and their children. Even those of us who are bona-fide tree-huggers, militant vegetarians, or radical-simplicity wackos, still do not wish this on anyone.

We all read every scrap of science with the same hope that there will be new evidence of a cooling trend, or a colossal mathematical error that proves that carbon isn’t trapped in the atmosphere at all, it’s all benignly wafting out into space. . . . There is nothing we want more than to be wrong—to go home, forget it all happened, and retreat, shamefaced, to live out our ordinary lives.

Science is bigger than the will or desire of any scientist . . . it repeatedly reveals the persistent will of the earth to follow its own laws, and not ours. We should call off any battles we think we are waging.

Alison writing again:  Since consumption drives global warming, I typically focus here at Diamond-Cut Life on lowering our consumption while keeping or increasing our happiness. (An unspoken fear that dealing with global warming will lead to misery is another reason people deny global warming.) Please remember that lifestyle changes like lowering our electricity and heating bills, saving money on gas, decoupling Christmas from spending and cooking delicious, low-cost, low-carbon meals are all win-wins for both us and the earth’s atmosphere that is hosting us.

Related Posts:

• The Psychology Of Naysayers On Global Warming
• When Deniers Of Global Warming Are Hurting Us All
• I Am So Back: Beauty, Battles And The Metolius River