It is common for people who are concerned about looming catastrophes like climate change and peak oil to appeal to the humanity of those doing the damage. They think that, if only they could have a word with people like former U.S. President Bush or current Canadian Prime Minister Harper, climate action obstructors both, they could get through with an appeal about caring for their own children. This is highly unlikely, and more importantly, is a waste of precious time.

It is not that these people do not care about their children, but that they have a different morality than you and I. We like to think that, deep down, everyone is just like us. This is a dangerous delusion, and it should be clear to anyone who observes human behaviour even briefly. There are some obvious examples, including psychopaths who murder others for reasons we don’t understand, like Jeffrey Dahmer who murdered and ate young men, or Clifford Olsen who was a serial child murderer, or the freaks who go into a school and start shooting. These people are not like us, they clearly have a different morality, and it matters little whether it is due to nature or nurture: Either way, we must protect ourselves from their dangerous behaviour first, psychoanalyse them later.

There are less obvious examples; the documentary The Corporation has pointed out that corporations behave like sociopaths; they have no social conscience. Their CEOs are responsible for and profit greatly from this behaviour, so I think it is fair to call them antisocial to such an extent that they are a danger to the rest of us.

In fact, I think it is a fair argument to say that most people who seek power are not like you and me. Power comes not only through politics, but also through climbing the corporate ladder, accumulating vast wealth, aligning yourself with powerful people, or murdering others. People who lust for power operate from a predator morality, in which might makes right. In practice, this means that whatever they can get away with is morally acceptable.

Most people concerned about climate change or social justice simply reject this. They want to believe that these people, who are doing clearly immoral acts, can be reasoned with, that their innate humanity can be appealed to. This is delusional. These people are ignoring the psychopath’s behaviour and projecting their own values upon him. Continue reading →

I don’t mean the Paris Hiltons of the world, but her daddy and his cronies – the CEOs, executives, and politicians – the rich and powerful. These people are the modern aristocracy. They have the most to gain in the short-term from the status quo, from maintaining that the current course is the ideal, and by claiming that only their compass is capable of pointing True North. Further, they have the money and connections to insulate themselves from the consequences of their actions, up to a point. They are thus strongly motivated to believe what they want to believe and to ignore reality.

The common man is not so isolated from consequences and has less motivation to believe that the rich know best, so those at the top must employ ‘think tanks’ to tell the little people what to think. Not surprisingly, what think tanks spout frequently coincides with what the rich want everyone to think.

John Kenneth Galbraith, the famous economist, noted the tendency of executives to be most psychologically committed to the rightness of the corporate vision – they have to be in order to attain their position. For example, if you accept that human-caused climate change is a problem, you’re very unlikely to become Chief Executive Officer of an oil or coal or auto company. The opposite is true: Continue reading →

There is no shortage of evidence that we have the technology we need to ‘green’ our energy supply. From Pacala and Socolow’s Stabilization Wedges to 100 Miles of Mirrors, we have what we need to drastically cut carbon emissions and get off oil. The cost of acting now is vastly less than acting later – an ounce of prevention is still worth a pound of cure – and there could even be a huge net savings. The United States, for example, would no longer need a military ‘presence’ in the Middle East. So why aren’t we taking serious steps in that direction?

Why aren’t we moving? The answers, I believe, are denial and vested interests. Continue reading →

Do you ever feel like you’re the only sane person in an insane world? I don’t want to believe that climate change and peak oil and peak fish and ocean acidification and various other looming catastrophes are coming. Who does? That would be psychopathic. At the same time, ignoring real-world evidence and shouting down scientists seems rather…crazy.

It’s easy to start questioning your sanity when so many act as if nothing is wrong. Here I am, fighting to get action on peak oil and climate change, and there goes Joe the Plumber, commuting to work in his brand new Hummer with a Support the Troops bumper sticker. And it’s not just people who could, possibly, be excused for not knowing any better. The Canadian Conservative Party, U.S. Republicans, and Libertarians everywhere – all loudly turning a blind eye to reality.

Is this not crazy? I have asked for contrary evidence from credible sources, and all I get are:

• Variations on “You’re crazy”; people calling me paranoid, sex-deprived, too stupid to even talk to, and so on
• Sources that are clearly not credible; look, if some guy is not a climate scientist, receives funding from oil companies, has a history of being funded by corporations and pushing their view against that of the vast majority of scientists and accumulated evidence, HE IS NOT CREDIBLE

I suppose people are desperate to believe what they want to believe. Perhaps many of them think that by shooting the messenger, the message he carries also dies. I wish it were true. Continue reading →