Predatory delay

Hey friends—

In this episode, we cover

• Climate denialism (a description, by the way, that I coined, back in the 1990s, as a way of indicating that we were looking at not merely the act of denying facts, but an ideological stance towards those facts—not an argument, but a propaganda movement).

• Mike Mann’s excellent book, The New Climate War, whose title I mangled but whose explanations of denialism and its workings are top notch.

• Downplaying, which is the act of consciously limiting the extent of threat and risk we agree to acknowledge, specifically to undermine the urgency of action even after the science of climate change and ecological collapse are accepted.

• Civic sabotage, the act of not just opposing political outcomes that would accelerate change (and thus put more pressure on the viability of the unsustainable, brittle and out-of-date) but of intentionally breaking the process of arriving at those outcomes by undermining debate, damaging trust in democratic processes, attacking elections, pushing corrupt money into politics and pursuing scorched-earth legislative agendas.

So, it’s pretty much a traipse through the tulips. Enjoy!