When my kids were young, I used to make up goofy bedtime stories. They were silly, with crazy characters. I called the main characters Ooga, Wooga, and Mooga. The kids laughed loudly and always begged for more.
For my readers today, I have decided to tell you one of those stories.
Long, long ago, about 1980, at a Paris coffee shop that stayed open until 3 a.m., Ooga, Wooga, and Mooga were sipping Turkish coffee and smoking cigarettes around midnight. Ooga said “I miss the good old days of Hitler, Stalin, and McCarthy in America.”
“Yeah, those were the days. Big lies, strong states, huge prisons,” said Wooga.
“Wouldn’t it be great if Communism could make a comeback? It’s all falling apart right now. I think the Germans are even going to tear down the Berlin Wall one of these days. Wouldn’t that be sad,” said Mooga.
Ooga chimed in, “We need a new ism or a new religion. Something based on fear, but without the ruthlessness of Hitler and Stalin. Something that the professors and the scientists and nice people would get behind without knowing that they were being used to bring on the new Communism.”
“We’re on to something,” said Wooga and Mooga. “Any ideas?”
Ooga said, “We have to get people scared. How about monsters?”
“Sounds too much like a comic book, not that there’s anything wrong with comics. I love Captain Marvel. How about volcanoes?” said Wooga.
“Not enough of them to really scare folks,” said Mooga.
They puffed and sipped, ate a couple of stale croissants, and then Ooga said, “Freezing to death. Maybe if we could get enough folks to be terrified that their world of apples and lilies was going to turn into a refrigerator, and plant life was going to shrivel, and they would have to pick up and move to the Congo to survive on bananas and fight gorillas, we’d have something sensational to sell,” he said.
“Not so fast,” said Wooga. “Cold is cool, but I read an article that said we are in a sunspot. The temperatures are inching up a tad. We could recruit some scientists and bearded university nerds at Harvard and Oxford and the Sorbonne. They’ll believe anything if you give them a grant, and then they’ll tell everyone that hell is approaching.”
“Now we are getting warm,” said Ooga. “Sweat rolling down everybody’s brow, even in Siberia and Alaska. Glaciers melting. No snow skiing for the rich people,” he went on.
“But we need something else for people to get paranoid about,” Mooga added to the party. “Any ideas?”
“We need some plagues and sickness,” said Wooga. “A lot of coughing and lung disease,” he said, puffing on his Camel cigarette.
“I’ve got it. Coal! Yeah, it’s black and yucky and miners look ugly coming up from the mines,” he added.
“What if we added all carbon fuels and threw in nuclear energy and terrified everybody with the specter of nuclear explosions at power plants,” said Ooga.
“Guys, I think we’ve got ourselves a new “ism” or a new religion. Christianity, Islam, Judaism will be yesterday. Climate change, global warming, they are a great new one-two punch. We need to get a few charismatic prophets and some venture capital money, buy off some writers and TV people, and we will be in business,” said Wooga.
“We need one more thing to sell this to Bill Gates and George Soros, a slogan or a jingle,” said Ooga.
“The existential threat of climate change,” said Mooga as he doodled it on his napkin.
“Dude, I think you just won yourself a Nobel Peace Prize,” laughed Ooga.
And now we can all go to sleep.
Question: Do you see the existential threat of climate change as a fable?
23 Comments
uh Lloyd, that doesn’t make me sleepy at all
Lloyd, you really like pulling the lion’s tail and tweaking the bear’s nose, don’t you?
I think the Aztecs may not have wanted to believe their environment was not being affected by their habits as well. Betting against environmental damage has a more serious downside than error on the side of caution. Worst case is we get cheaper renewable energy for the long term. The climate denying side can’t say the same.
Over the years— All the made up diversions by the undermining worthless people in positions—-go get real jobs!
Fearmongering at it’s finest. Humanity has thrived despite all that Mother Nature has thrown at us.
Call me a Leibnizian rationalist but our built in anthropocentrism is a feature, not a bug, and helps those who have eyes to see, ears to hear, and noses with which to smell the petrichors conclude that we truly live in ‘the best of all possible
worlds’.
Earth first. we can exploit the rest later!
Some have even been so “extreme” to suggest that there is someone infinitely bigger and wiser than all of us that has it ALL in control. Crazy right? See ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE…
Here in Iowa we see temperature swings as much as 50 degrees from one day to the next. How do we survive this? If the temp changes 3 degrees over the next 50 years, somehow we will deal with it.
Wow Lloyd, you went there. Thanks, it’s rather refreshing. Prepare for the onslaught you “denier”…
I’m not sure of “existential threat” but denying the damage being done and the impact on our offspring seems rather selfish – but what do I know?
Nature doesn’t care about humanity. We will be exterminated sooner or later.
LLoyd,
Very nice story… Why not run for president… Fear Sells…
John
Here’s another fear sells story 5G will setback weather forcasting 30 years
https://www.flyingmag.com/as-5g-house-hearing-looms-one-expert-brings-up-a-different-concern/?utm_campaign=Newsletter%20-%20Flying%20Mag%20Daily&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=202709368&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_RZo5FlaDsD0w4quMqAxNdF6QUqbyrrA1aej9fbAnrsjCNqxiF_IR0_aUUj9_D-riAnLiST0W1-F5OCAsvNKftUgWs5w&utm_content=202709368&utm_source=hs_email
So many things to unpack here. I live near Seattle, one time while riding the ferry, I saw a diagram that illustrated that Puget sound was created by a glacier that was 1 mile thick. Imagine Seattle buried under 5,280 feet of ice only 25,000 years ago. So how much of climate change is natural, how much is accelerated by man, that I do not know.
As a boy scout, I was taught to leave your campsite in BETTER condition than you found it. I think that is a simple enough guiding principle. Is strip mining for coal, oil spills and ground water contamination from fracking leaving ones campsite in better condition? Is the warped geopolitical world, where the US is entangled in a politically unstable region like the middle east due to our (now slightly less) dependence on foreign oil, a good thing? Are the massive economic disruptions (like the US endured during the 1973 and 1979 oil embargos) desirable?
The world’s rapacious need for energy has governments and ourselves looking the other way, when energy exploration harms others. If it was not for the oil, it is reasonably likely that Iran would STILL be a democracy and an ally of the US, instead of theocratic government fomenting terrorism throughout the region and attempting to become a nuclear power.
Distributed, renewable energy lessens the dependence on these extremely powerful industries and cartels; industries that do not have a particularly good record with regards to environmental stewardship and humanitarian behavior. If global warming is ever so slightly mitigated in the process, all the much better.
I am no advocate of pollution. The oil and coal companies and chemical firms have been filthy stewards of their properties but most of that has been cleaned up. My fable aimed at the fearmongering by dumb elites and malicious fools who see climate change as a lever to bring back state control of daily life. Solar, wind and geothermal have a place if they are economically competitive which includes pollution costs. But climate change is unproven and even if it does exist to some degree, the actual damage it might cause it is probably more than offset by how much good it does. Over a decade, millions and millions of people die from the cold. What is it worth to save 3 million lives in a decade. As far as agriculture it is unproven whether minor global warming will bring more bountiful crops or less, but the indication is more.
Existential threat? Ignore the jingle.
Climate change is real. About 21,000 years ago, glaciers covered your beloved Chicago. I think the real questions are: are humans accelerating it, and is it possible to reverse?
HI Lloyd
I’m a bit late to this party, so I’ll just say that this is one of your best.
Bill
I remember the bad smog when driving up to Los Angeles in the 1960’s, but we have really come a long way to mitigate pollution – perhaps 95%. The next 5% is REALLY gonna hurt. As a small, high-end woodworking business in California, I’m absolutely certain I’m being targeted as a ‘destroyer of the environment’ by the Democratic ‘super majority’! That radical environmental ‘religion’ is indeed alive and well here in California and it’s worse than legalistic. It’s truly ‘law-fare’ against manufacturers. Red-states have become a safe haven, flourishing and welcoming perhaps 100,000 fleeing the insanity of hypocritical (Marxist) leftists in heavy blue-states each year. Unfortunately good folks that just want to ‘do the right thing’ and go-along-to-get-along are totally ignorant of this oppression and vote ‘left’ because it sounds and feels good. They are especially ignorant of manufacturers being crushed with heavy handed regulatory oppression. The environmentalists think; ‘of course China can make everything for us and we’ll be saving the environment’ – out of sight out of mind – right? Trust the CCP to be our dear trusted ‘friends’, they mean well and don’t want to dominate the world – right? New designs of nuclear-power generation are clean and safe, what’s up with the mentally dishonest political-correctness that destroys the best solutions and close nuclear generation plants!?! Btw, our sun is affecting the earth (and planets) infinitely more than we humans, and goes through decades and centuries long cycles of various activity directly causing temperature (climate) change.
Gramma used to tell us 60 years ago, that “all these storms are caused by em sending all those rockets up in the air!!!” Gramma was of Indian descent. What if Gramma was right???
I liked your story. It is actually happening a Davos every year when the World Economic Forum meets. They decide on the narrative and the mockingbird media repeats it ad nauseum. It all fear propaganda. But while the are distracting us with lies, they are working hard to make us sick and steal our savings. I see chemtrails almost every day when i take my walk. When i write to my “representative” in Congress, i get a letter that looks like it was written by the CIA claiming “oh never mind, those are just harmless contrails.” Yeah, right.
The World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted Event 201, a high-level pandemic exercise on October 18, 2019, in New York, NY. Then a few months later (((they))) roll out the phony Plandemic. All governments of the world (except Sweden) shut down their economies! Yet none dare call it conspiracy. It is so obvious…
Lloyd
I think you hit a great spot with your fable. Climate science has certainly become a religion. They worship at the alter of big money (Davos). Their have child leading the way (Greta). The trees and forest are the sanctuary. The sacraments are higher prices for all.
That being said climate change is a fable.
I was hoping for a little global warming this morning when it was -14F, but really glad I had a furnace and a car with a good heater.
Steve
I believe climate change is real. The question to ask is how much does human activity contribute to it? I do not believe it is an “existential threat” as some may want you to believe. Anyway, I believe that technology is how we reduce our carbon footprint, and technology needs wealth to fund the research to make things more efficient. The government needs to get out of the business of pushing green energy and allow technology and the infrastructure to develop naturally in the free market.
I just read through these replies, and I cannot believe what your readers write.
There are some angry folks out there.
Stick your heads out the window and shout out…..”I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
There now, doesn’t that make you feel better.
Great blog, with a lot of great comments. Climate change and general air water and land pollution are two different subjects. Here in the United States we have done a wonderful job of cleaning up air water and land pollution since the EPA was established 50 years ago.
Climate change is not an existential threat. We are not all going to become toast. Realizing how historically the earth has gone from ice ages to warm periods that were a few degrees warmer than today says that the end of the earth is not near. In general a few degrees warmer will probably be beneficial. Everyone knows that death rates go up everywhere in the world during the winter and subside during the summer. Likewise more crops grow when it becomes warmer longer, and more humidity causes more rain.
There is no excuse for industrial pollution, or automobile, airplane and other transportation emissions. The air quality has improved dramatically since the first clean air act of 1970. In general the water quality has improved everywhere. And solid waste disposal does not seem to be the emotional issue it was 20 years ago.