Clear and Present Danger

I'm on shock and outrage overload these days, so I'm prioritizing what I really want to talk about.  Racism and xenophobia are high on my list, but they get beat for the number one spot by one thing: Climate change.  Human dignity and things like equality and freedom aren't going to mean much if we destroy our air, water and shove the carrying capacity of our planet towards the bad. I am a believer that a diversity of opinions is generally a good thing.  For instance, I'm not so certain of my own position on say the economic virtues of socialism as opposed to free marked capitalism that I would seek to squash a conversation about the relative merits in the public sphere, or to simply dismiss those who hold to the capitalist perspective as fools, they're not, and I'm not an economist, it's a pretty big question.
However, when it comes to climate change, and more particularly the reality of human agency in causing climate change, the evidence has piled up too high for reasonable people to argue about it.  If 90 plus percent of any scientific discipline agrees to some degree on anything, we layman and those in other disciplines would do well to heed that consensus.  Over 90 percent of those who study the climate of our planet agree that global temperatures are on the rise and that the rate of rise and its correlative Carbon Dioxide levels in the atmosphere are passing dangerous levels as we speak.  Whatever percentage of climate scientists disagree probably work for an oil company.
Simple majority opinion was not always a good indicator of scientific truth, just as Galileo, but these days the scientific method and the scientific mindset are well developed and rigorously adhered to by the community of actual scientists, even if the public at large is still prone to go off after fantastic and whimsical speculation.  In the "real" sciences, people know to hold their horses until a study, a paper or any finding has been peer reviewed and/or the data is proven to be repeatable and observable.  It took a while for climate change to reach this milestone, and we probably wasted some valuable time in the waiting, but it is there now, and we do not have an excuse any longer.
Beyond the raw science of the issue, there is also the issue of human motivations, which is more up my alley these days.  What motivations drive things like the Paris Accords? The desire for the long term health of our environment. Mitigation of climate driven disasters like floods, hurricanes, the fear that tropical diseases like malaria, yellow fever and even Ebola will become common and spread out further.  A case can be made that even things like the crisis in Syria essentially began with a drought that began the refugee crisis and sent people scrambling for someone who could help them survive a harsher, drier and more barren existence.  When people start watching their children starve they tend to get violent.  Climate change disproportionately effects the poor and the most vulnerable populations, it is most certainly a justice issue.
What drives the resistance to regulation and mitigation of CO2 emissions? Money. There is no other reason to deny what a shockingly dominant plurality of the scientific community is telling you.  Why else would you resist the data as you increasingly look more and more foolish?  Because Exxon-Mobile or Koch is, in some way, shape or form, paying you off.
Having lived in natural gas country for ten years, I am aware that this is not all about lobbyists buying off politicians.  This is also about the people, many of whom I care very much about, who make their living digging coal out of the ground, drilling for natural gas and working in coal burning power plants.  I have faces to go with the people that are directly effected by CO2 mitigation and I know there are difficult challenges to face along that path.  I know that a lot of them probably voted for Trump, and I can't really say I blame them. He promises them that they will be able to continue doing what they do and putting food on the table, and he sells them the lie they want to believe: all these negative things about climate change, those sappy ads about polar bears having a rough time, that's all just liberal propaganda and a Chinese hoax.
The fact of the matter is, those jobs aren't going to last forever, and we need to get real about that.  We need to get real about it because, if we don't our inaction is going to cause widespread suffering.  Our politicians have not done enough fast enough, because Shell and BP can put enough cash in their coffers to cover up any concern they may have for world they are leaving to their children and grandchildren.
Unfortunately, this is a problem that cannot be solved by some small group of people doing the right thing.  Those people who drive a Prius or choose to walk to work are not going to really make a dent in the global problem.  My compost heap or my decision to drive a more fuel efficient car is not going to stave off an environmental catastrophe.  We need our governments to get on the job, which is why I thought the Paris Accords were such a great step, especially when the US, China, India and most of the developed world all signed on.  Trump would scrap all of that progress (there's a hope that it's too late and he actually can't, but who knows). That is foolishness of the highest order, even if you're slightly skeptical of Waterworld or Mad Max type scenarios playing out.  It is like the reverse of that old mom argument: If everyone jumped off a bridge would you.  It is actually: Everyone (at least in the developed world) has decided not to jump off of this particular bridge, why do we still insist on doing it?