JULY 15, 2019 – Whenever I spend time up at the cabin, I think about nature and . . . climate change. I think about what scientists are saying about changes to the environment around here; that over the next two decades, loons will be forced farther north until they disappear from here altogether; how a warming climate will result in more disease carrying ticks and other insects to our woods; how violent, destructive summer storms will be more frequent; flooding more common; and so on.
I then think about the broader consequences of climate change around the world—desertification of the sub-Sahara and droughts in Syria and Central America, leading to mass migration north. I think of the alarming rate of ice melt in Greenland and Antarctica and predictions that rising sea levels over the next quarter century will displace tens of millions of people in coastal areas around the globe.
Then I think of the deniers—the hoodwinkers (mainly fossil fuel industry and those in their pay) and the hoodwinked (people swayed and snookered by the cynical profiteers); but mostly I think about the hoodwinked. I think, how can the rest of us convince the hoodwinked that they are being hoodwinked?
Yesterday while walking the woods, I had a thought about all of this. I pretended that the matter of convincing the hoodwinked was a personal injury (“PI”) case in front of a jury. As even I, a business lawyer knows, there are two parts of a PI case: 1. Liability; and 2. Damages. You can have a case where the plaintiff has horrible injuries and sky-high damages—direct, indirect; medical and loss of income; pain and suffering, etc. However, the plaintiff won’t get a dime of compensation if her lawyer can’t establish liability on the part of the defendant(s).
So it is with the whole matter of climate change. The tougher half of the case, it seems, is in establishing liability—that is, cause—in the minds of the skeptics in the jury box. And who, exactly are those skeptics? Republicans and perfectly smart folks who by nature (no pun intended) and principle oppose anything advocated by Democrats or a majority and therefore rigorously oppose anything advocated by a super-majority (e.g. all Democrats and 97% of climate scientists).
Let’s not worry about the “liability” half—the tough half—of the case. Let’s put that aside and focus only on “damages.” Let’s highlight the injured and ailing earth; the enormous economic damages that will ensue from the rise in average global temperature; the political instability produced by tens of millions of climate refugees fleeing places where agriculture and human habitation will no longer be viable—all irrespective of cause, of “liability.”
Maybe then the influence of the fossil fuel industry will be overcome. Maybe then, 97% of Republican voters will begin to acknowledge and accept the conclusions of 97% of climate scientists. Maybe then we can address effectively what should be the central concern of every human being, present and future, on this planet.
© 2019 Eric Nilsson
