Denial of Climate Change is Not the Problem

A large majority of the public now agrees that climate catastrophe is the most important problem facing humanity. Over ninety percent of scientists are in agreement about the causes and dire projections of climate catastrophe. And the list goes on and on.

However, we are still racing for the precipice. I mean just walk outside and it’s happening right in front of you. Cars burning fossil fuels and made up of components that are largely made up of petroleum byproducts and everybody is running around buying things, using plastic, and generating polluting waste.

Essentially we are devouring the planet like maggots while our shit piles up. And we won’t stop until our shit reaches our nostrils.

Why is that? Why are we committing planetocide, or ecocide, or whatever you want to call it?

The answer again is right in front of us. Simply go outside to any shopping area and you will see human beings acting very normally, as in conducting consumerism. We are consuming. And we have greed, selfishness and unlimited desires that drive us and this human behavior is what underpins capitalism, which is the economic model operating in most countries. Which country is not powered by greed, selfishness, and unlimited human desires? There isn’t one.

We are wired by evolution to behave this way and it is this wiring that is pushing us towards the precipice.

How many people do you know that have culturally evolved to a level where greed, selfishness, and basic desires no longer drive their daily activity? Maybe a select few in a Zen monastery or an Indian ashram or a Tibetan temple but 99% of the human population is greedy, selfish, and largely has little control over their desires.

So doesn’t it make sense to direct these forces towards sustainability, renewables, and in general non-ecocidal activity?

Let’s face it, we will not save the planet by sitting around waiting for human nature to change. It just won’t happen.

It won’t make any difference how many billions of Facebook posts are shared or liked about climate change.

If we are going to save the planet we need to come up with a way to make saving the planet very profitable.

We need to come up with a way to make saving the planet something greedy millionaires and billionaires will stampede to want to invest in. We need to find a way to make it very profitable to not use pesticides, or cause air pollution.

Regenerative agriculture needs to become more profitable than industrial agriculture. Organic farming needs to become something venture capitalists lust over.

Any activity that is environmentally destructive needs to be unprofitable and any activity that regenerates the planet and is ecologically harmonious highly profitable.

When we figure out a way to make saving the planet more profitable than destroying it then there is hope for the human future and the planet. The same goes for nuclear war. We need to come up with a way to make peace making very profitable, far more profitable than war making. Getting rid of nuclear weapons needs to become the most profitable thing in the world.

If we assume the above is agreed to then we come to the hard part: How do we do this?

Daryan Rezazad is the managing director of Mero Iran and is currently establishing Pivotal Cleantech of Iran so as to transfer technologies which are sustainable and help solve environmental problems.