POV

 

Realism / Henry Herbert La Thangue/ The Festa

Not really much going on today.  Raining (again) I suppose that compared to the droughts and record heat in other parts of the country, I should be content with adequate water supply and weather more reminiscent of the historical than the last ten years of a more mediterranean climate.  

I spent some time chatting with the neighbors yesterday.  The complex where I live has a fairly heavy sprinkling of folks my age.  Kinda nice having a spread of age groups around.  

But the folks my age seem to tend toward climate change denial.  I am wondering to myself and pondering why that is.  I think that there is a lot of class mistrust there.  Folks my age who live in apartments and still have to work are not usually of the professional managerial class (PMC).  They still work because they have to should they not wish to be homeless.  I think that might be the reason.

The growing economic chasm that has been engineered by the PMC is real.  The socioeconomic divide between the working class and the PMC has been bad and is getting worse.  This is by design.  The PMC knows that there is only so much to be shared and they have structured the economy so that the top 20% “skim the cream” and the pale skim milk of the remainder is grudgingly allotted to the hoi polloi. Now, in line with my comments yesterday, the scraps left are pretty sweet and put one into the top portion of the world population.  But wealth and status are local.  I would posit that it is easier to be in the lower 50% of the US population than the upper 10% of the overall world population.  No real facts to support this, I suppose that I could go out and find some bullshit produced by a think tank somewhere, but who knows what orifice they pulled that from.

So, back to the point being made prior to the digression.  The folks here don’t really think that climate change is a thing to worry about.  Simply put, they see the mouthings of the PMC as a not-to-subtle ploy to maintain a very significant differentiation between “them and us”.  Seeing as the PMC has been spewing out bullshit for the past forty years (probably more) that has led to the huge divide, they just see the PMC’s pearl-clutching over climate change as being yet another cynical ploy to maintain the unequal status quo.

Now, I kinda think that the data being presented looks pretty good in supporting the concept that anthropogenic inputs are a driver of climate change.  I tend to look at it as more of a long term problem that is effectively unsolvable.  But the folks that I talk to on the non-PMC flavor just see it as another line of bullshit that the PMC uses to keep their pockets well-lined. 

Who knows.  It may well be both.