(Roughly) Daily

A bracing essay from Adam McKay (director of Don’t Look Up, Vice, and The Big Short, among many other films), arguing that our acceptance of assurances that we have time left to address climate change, or that “Net Zero by 2050” will save us, is driving us toward full social collapse in ways that become more obvious with every new broken temperature record…

Lies are a lot like gourds. They come in hundreds of different varieties, sizes, and bulbous, twisty shapes. Some are off-puttingly spiked and prickly, while others remind us of fall childhood memories.

Some lies, if prepared correctly like squash or pumpkin, can appear delicious and irresistible, concealing a dark reality: “I can’t believe you’re not a model! For five thousand dollars I can photograph you so you have a portfolio.” The central aim of most lies is to avoid consequences. When an untruth is especially desperate and self-serving, it can be unintentionally hilarious: “Yes I tried marijuana… but I did not inhale.” 

Embezzling money or murdering someone for the insurance pay-out are part of a phylum of lies that cross into serious criminality. These deceptions’ sphere of influence often stays fairly localized. But sometimes covering up the initial lie can spawn lots of other lies that spread and spread, like with Watergate or Bernie Madoff. What started as a little decorative Thanksgiving-gourd-sized lie suddenly becomes larger and quite ugly. This family of lies strives to not only avoid consequences, but to gain status and resources, another common end game of many deceptions.

And then there are the large society-wide lies: hulking distortions and misrepresentations watered and tended to by leaders, mass media, culture, and industry.

This particular sub-genus of grifts, half-truths and strategic omissions have led throughout modern history to wars, mass death, societal collapse, and the theft of humanity’s great treasures. “Manifest Destiny.” “Aryan superiority.” “The divine right of kings.” “The domino theory.” “Israel has a right to defend itself.” “Oxycontin isn’t addictive because it’s time-released.” These county-fair, blue ribbon-winning prevarications tend to be driven by a myriad of short-term incentives, irrational manipulated fears, unexamined assumptions, convenient blind spots, and of course… the desire to avoid consequences and expand status and resources.

“People always pay their mortgages” became the half-true rallying cry used by Wall Street, news media, and politicians to collapse the world economy in 2007. Turns out when you change lending rules to feed an unregulated derivatives market by giving mortgages to people who can’t pay them… they don’t. “Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction” (along with the subvariations on the central lie—“We want to bring democracy,” “If you don’t support the troops, you support the terrorists,” “Saddam orchestrated 9/11,” etc) killed a million people, devastated the entire nation of Iraq, and in many ways also gutted the United States, all while enriching oil companies, weapons manufacturers, big banks, juicing TV ratings, and expanding the power of the Bush/Cheney presidency.

However, there is one type of rare, gargantuan, towering lie that makes all the other mass lies throughout human history seem like frightened, scurrying, little adorable fibs.

It is a lie told worldwide by hundreds of thousands of institutions, elected officials, many universities, legacy news, some large non-profits and eventually—as the deception entered mainstream culture—even by ourselves, to ourselves, every single moment of every day. It is a constantly growing gourd that even as a baby back in the 1970s was the size of three aircraft carriers. These days it is so massive it is almost easier to refer to what isn’t part of it (Disneyland, a BLT, that green croc by the side of the highway) than what is.

This massive lie can best be summed up as “when it comes to climate change… we have more time.”

To be clear, we are not talking about the kind of total climate denial one would find on the extremist, lunatic fringe inhabited by the likes of Alex Jones or the current U.S. President. And we’re not referring to cartoonish hucksters and “climate skeptics” like Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson.

Polling shows only 14.8 percent of Americans deny the basic sixth grade science behind global warming. To put that in perspective, as much as 10 percent of the population still believes the Earth is flat.

No, the monstrous, misshapen garden colossus lie we’re referring to is subscribed to by most of the U.S., has stopped and slowed climate action far more than outright denial, and keeps growing and growing. Every day this deception whispers seductively in the ears of mankind: “global warming is real but not urgent… Keep doing what you’re doing.”

Less embarrassing than “climate change is a Chinese hoax,” but every bit as unscientific and ridiculous, it is the preferred lie of the ruling class, mainstream news media, and corporations.

Sir David King—former science advisor to the United Kingdom, professor at Oxford and then Cambridge, winner of too many awards to list and as establishment as they come—was quoted as saying that what we do over the next three to four years will determine the fate of humankind.

He said this… in 2021…

[McKay unpacks a chilling variety of examples of “the lie” in action, contrasting government/media/corporate messages with the reality to which the )ostensibly) refer…]

… Still have doubts? If you do, I don’t blame you. We live in a consumer culture hammering us daily with triggering political proclamations, sales pitches, and clickbait designed to spike engagement responses in the brain. “Immigrants are coming for your way of life!” “This new SUV is the best ever!” “Great White Shark Eats Porn Star!” Most of it is misleading, in one way or another, so there’s a natural tendency to assume that “Planet about to boil!” might be too.

But Big Oil and its PR agencies know this, and they’ve weaponized the healthy skepticism we’ve developed as a survival mechanism against those voices speaking the truth about the urgent state of the climate.

After all, who are you going to believe? The New York Times, an outlet famous for downplaying climate urgency, or some weird scientist saying crazy things? Even when a profession famous for dead-eyed, bottom-line risk assessment like insurance actuaries releases a statement about how serious the situation is, corporate news media turns it into what people used to call a “below the fold story,” framing it as just another minor environmental item—not headline news.

In service of the Great Lie, the government of the United Kingdom even tried to bury a climate report from its own intelligence agency before it was leaked. To my knowledge there aren’t many spies being called tree huggers, unless they’re undercover of course. But the MI5 and MI6 are clear-eyed about the danger that’s coming. The report warned that “global ecosystem degradation and collapse threaten UK national security and prosperity.”

No one wants to eat a raw pumpkin. It looks like a Dr. Seuss character’s brain, is full of seeds, and has no real taste. But like with any good lie, when the right sugar, spices, a buttery crust, and time in the oven is added, pumpkin pie becomes a cherished classic.

The same thing happens with the climate lie. The financial markets, massive oil companies, the banks that finance them, the travel industry, car companies, your career and job security, the people you’re having dinner with who don’t want to be bummed out, all of these incentives and forces don’t want you to know you are eating a big, weird gourd.

And as long as we go with their mendacious flow, hundreds of millions, and then billions will die well before “Net Zero by 2050” or “our great grandkids’ future” arrive. Because we are out of time. And we need to get to work immediately. There are a million things to do…

As Pope John Paul II said, “An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded.”

Eminently worth reading in full: “The Gargantuan Lie That is Collapsing The World’s Climate,” from @ghostpanther.bsky.social in @currentaffairs.bsky.social.

Oh, and meantime: “U.S. Declared An Energy Emergency, Then Paid $4 Billion For Less Energy.”

* Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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As we face up, we might spare a thought for Blaise Pascal; he died on this date in 1662.  A French mathematician, physicist, theologian, and inventor (e.g., the first digital calculator, the barometer, the hydraulic press, and the syringe), his commitment to empiricism (“experiments are the true teachers which one must follow in physics”) pitted him against his contemporary René “cogito, ergo sum” Descartes– and was foundational in the acceleration of the scientific/rationalist commitment to measurement (and the conclusions/actions they dictated).

Relevantly to McKay’s piece, Pascal also advanced the philosphical argument we know as “Pascal’s Wager.” While he posed the exercise as a life-defining gamble regarding the belief in the existence of God, we can easily transpose it to apply to climate change action:

Pascal contends that a rational person should adopt a lifestyle consistent with the existence of God and should strive to believe in God. The reasoning for this stance involves the potential outcomes: if God does not exist, the believer incurs only finite losses, potentially sacrificing certain pleasures and luxuries; if God does exist, the believer stands to gain immeasurably, as represented for example by an eternity in Heaven in Abrahamic tradition, while simultaneously avoiding boundless losses associated with an eternity in Hell. –source

If the threat of climate change is, as “the lies” suggest, real but distant, then immediate action only costs us some short-term sacrifice. But if that threat is imminent, immediate action could preserve our way of life and the prospect of an improving future for us and our children and their children… while inaction is likely to end in utter disaster.

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