Climate Change: A Dystopian Future
— George, why people do nothing about it and head directly towards a dystopian future?
— My dear… People do nothing and continue to live as they do because they are largely governed by what I was telling you about the other day: wishful thinking. They do not actually believe that the future will be dystopian and they think that things will be just fine — or, at least, that they will be just fine. All those dystopian books, movies, videos, etc. fail to have any influence over people because they usually present only the outcome and not the sequence of things that lead to what they portray. Of course, the evidence is there. Anyone who wants to be informed can be informed. But people are lazy, they are tired — we have talked about it before.1 Getting informed about the evidence takes time, effort, courage. So, in the absence of all the evidence, people can dismiss what they are told easily. This is why all those films, stories, news articles, etc. are quite useless.
— Maybe they are not as useless, George.
— Maybe! However, till now, despite the vast amount of them, most people continue to live more or less the same way as they used to live and have more or less the same aspirations and ambitions as they used to have. Therefore, the impact of all those works, at least in practice, seems to be rather superficial and ephemeral. But it doesn't really matter anyway. As I have told you before, change will come only when people start valuing the things that have a small environmental footprint more than the things that have a high one. Change will come when people stop fetishizing material goods as they do today. It will come when people start walking, cycling and taking the public transport instead of their car; when they start eating more vegetables and less meat; when they start falling in love, enjoying the nature, dancing, reading and discussing instead of consuming and pursuing all those material goods that they currently consider necessary. Above all, real change will come only when people truly love life. Because only then they may start caring about protecting it…
Written in 2021
George thinks that people are justifiably tired and lazy. However, he does think that they are capable of doing more than they currently think they can do.