In Hothouse Earth (Icon Books 2022: 160) Bill McGuire writes:
“The truth is, playing down the potential worst effects of global heating and climate breakdown is far worse than raising the alarm and amounts to what I like to call climate appeasement. It does nothing to help spur the urgent action that is required, and by underplaying the climate threat it works - intentionally or not - to encourage a grudging and cautionary approach to emissions cuts that we can no longer afford.”
I don’t really understand this, perhaps because I’m confused about what “climate appeasement” means. Who / What is being appeased? The future? It makes no sense to me. Those of you with better brains than me, please help * …
* I mean, not even Steve Martin could explain it to me!
It is widely quoted that Churchill, who was a vigorous opponent of our appeasing of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, said: "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last", although what he actually said was more like this:
"Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. But I fear greatly that the storm will not pass. It will rage and it will roar ever more loudly, ever more widely."
See this for more background. I'd say there is no escaping from the climate change croc.
I am forever intrigued by the alarmist language used to describe Global Climate Change (I deliberately use a more neutral term here) by McGuire, Global Heating and Climate Breakdown, and also Climate Threat. Without getting into any debate in this limited response space; is the planet warming? - yes; is it breaking down? - I think we will still have climate no matter what happens, is it a threat? - only to the human perception and life that cannot adapt to it changing. Simple rational discussion seems to have gone out of the window. Without taking any side(s) here in this issue, climate has, and always will, change throughout geological history - only humans think it has, and should stay stable. Climate catastrophe seems the modern norm, and to even try to have rational discussion of data that dare challenge this norm in anyway detracts from discussions that might prove more fruitful in finding solutions that work for everyone and not just the elites!