The Challenge of Change
With regards to “Climate Change,” adaptation NOT eradication is the more realistic path forward, if not the only viable path, which is available to us (as individuals, peoples, and nations).
If you do not want the rising tides and recurring storm surges to threaten your beachfront home, which clings precariously to the edge of the earth, then do not build a beachfront home, which clings precariously to the edge of the earth.
Those, who choose to build their houses — to establish themselves — without the benefit of a solid foundation (i.e. upon shifting sands), should be prepared to endure the consequences and to accept the inevitable harms, losses, and costs arising from their actions and decisions. The idea of pulling up roots and relocating may be unpleasant, even daunting, but migration (both voluntary and forced) has defined our species and the course of our (social) evolution since time immemorial. Nothing makes an individual or group “entitled” to occupy or to reside in a particular location. We are not guaranteed lives, which are defined by fixed circumstances or an unchanging environment.
“Climate Change” is a nebulous and indomitable foe. Today’s dire warnings follow the predictions of “Global Cooling” from the 1970’s, and the concept has evolved from the less marketable “Global Warming” nomenclature, which was was common at the turn of the millennium. Climate Change presents individual threats, challenges, and opportunities, as well as socio-political and economic challenges for nations and peoples. In the near-term, however, it does not represent an “existential crisis” for our species as a whole.
Political minions would have us to believe that Climate Change represents the same threat level as a barbaric foe or invading army. They wish us to fear imminent death and certain destruction, and statists seek to present government as a “White Knight” coming to save the day — to slay the evil dragon.
However, eradicating Climate Change is not an end of itself. In fact, it is a fool’s errand. There is no viable path to victory, and there is no realistic exit strategy. Instead, the ongoing efforts would serve as a means to self-serving ends for those who covet vicarious power along with the position, prestige, and profit, which can be derived therefrom. Such persons are akin to warmongers and profiteers.
In their minds, an incessant battle against such a determined foe would afford them “War Powers.” We have all heard that “all is fair in … war,” and war provides cover for all manner of waste, destruction, and atrocities. Such powers must be broad and expansive. As power trends towards absolute, so does the certainty that those powers will be corrupting. The resulting corruption leads to abuse, oppression, and tyranny.
How do we know this to be true? Because, in fleeting moments of candor and in rare demonstrations of sincerity, the minions themselves have told us.
Rahm Emanuel, former Chief-of-Staff for President Obama, (in)famously said:
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”
AOC’s former Chief-of-Staff, in speaking to the Washington Post, said:
“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all. … Do you guys think of it as a climate thing? Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”
“Change” is inevitable, and efforts to stop such changes are as fruitless as efforts to hold back the tides. Ebbs and flows are inherent to the nature of the things themselves. Organisms, which rely exclusively on the status quo without adapting — without demonstrating a reason for their continued existence (i.e. a benefit to the world around them) — grow obsolete and die off. However, one should be wary of all those, who command forced change for one’s “own good.” The motivations of such “moral busybodies” are almost invariably self-serving.
In the words of C.S. Lewis:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
The People cannot simultaneously be both wards and masters of the State. Each of us has but one live to life. That life is the single greatest resource that will ever be afforded to us.
Who determines how that life will be lived? Will you be master of your own life, and live that life to the best of your ability? Or, will you be “classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals,” as the state uses you as a resource to be manipulated and the collective consumes your life and the fruits of your labor as fodder?
