I have travelled, not enough, but a lot. I have been to some of the most beautiful places on the planet.  So has Elizbeth Kolbert, a staff writer for the New Yorker, and as she said, on the Daily Show, “these are places  we might want to take an interest in.” She pointed out that “life on our planet is very resilient, otherwise it wouldn’t be here.” Yet she added an ominous note, “But we are really piling it on right now.” Someone else might have said, “But we are really asking for it right now?” So why are we not changing?

We know life on the planet is tenuous. We have a lot of information. Kolbert said, but yet we are doing very little about it. Is that not not terrifying?

Kolbert had recently been to Greenland, which ten thousand years ago looked much like New York does today.  Where New York is located people there were standing on more than a mile of ice as people there are doing now in Greenland. After that the ice retreated and we entered an amazing period of climate stability. The climate has been remarkably stable in the last 10,000 years. During this time “we invent what we call civilization.” During this time we invent agriculture, towns, cities and things like that. “And what do we do to use these 10,000 years? We invent ways to disrupt the climate.” Instead of trying to keep the climate which benefited us so much, we destroy it instead. “We have chosen to go the other way with all this mounting evidence of the risks which that entails.”

That is pretty dumb isn’t it? You might even ask, “How stupid can you get?” If we keep doing what we are doing, Greenland will come to look like New York but there will be 20 feet of sea level rise over New York city. People will no longer live in New York which they love.

But now even if we don’t know how to solve this problem, this very big problem, the fact is we are not anywhere near moving in the right direction. Canada, per capita, is putting more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than maybe only one or two other countries. That can’t be right!

In the US under the leadership of Donald Trump, even though they have produced more of the greenhouse gases than any other country in the world they are not just doing nothing about it, they are not only doing little about it, they are actually encouraging other countries to do nothing either! That can’t be right either. As Kolbert said, “that is pretty unconscionable.” They could not really be doing worse than they are doing. The same goes for Canada, I would add. We always say we are a small country and what we do makes no difference. But we are the #2 polluter per capita in the world per capita and now we want to invest in another major oil pipeline, when green energy is the cheapest energy in the world.

China is acting much better than us. It is investing in green energy Bigly while the US and Canada invest in the most expensive and most harmful energy. There is money to be made with clean energy, but we are choosing not to go there. The US is now the largest producer of oil and gas energy on the planet. A lot of people are getting rich on that. The same goes for Canada. People producing oil and gas energy are making a lot money on pipelines. These people, let’s face it, are spending a lot of money to convince us to keep doing what we are doing.  They are spending a lot of money to convince us that things are hopeless we should just keep on trucking. They are spending a lot of money to try to deflect us from doing anything about it and have been very successful at that. That is not just a disgrace. That is stupid.

As Kolbert pointed out, we in the US, and of course Canada, are investing as if we have a choice to invest in this new product called light bulbs and want to insist instead on investing in the tried-and-true kerosene.  China will own the new industries. We will be stuck with the old that no one wants anymore. As a result, it is her view that we will really regret this in 20 years while China will bask in its new wealth. That is what we are doing. As Kolbert summed up, “What we are doing makes no sense economically nor environmentally.”

As Jon Stewart responded, “Making sense has not been our forte.” And that is stupid. Sometimes our devotion to ignorance seems pretty profound.