Sandra Steingraber’s pre-teen child told her that recently, as she relates poignantly in Orion Magazine. (I got to this via Alternet.org) And Steinbrager has decided to do something about it. She’s going to get INVOLVED!
And it’s darn well about time. The educated middle class, which should have been the driver for action on climate change, instead has used virtually the same amount of energy vigorously practicing denial.
Steinbrager reports the way her adult friends repeatedly exclaim “This is crazy!” after each accumulated incident of freakier and more destructive weather. I’ve heard the same thing myself, but accompanied by a very little first-hand evidence of middle class parents seeking to understand the larger pattern and its implications—let alone demand that our so-called leaders do something about it.
Granted, part of the reason for the denial is paralyzing fear, but really, I’ve run out of tolerance for the refusal of the middle class to start responding to an issue that so radically threatens their children’s future. It’s on a par with their denial of the economic restructuring that leaves them saddled with the tax burden that the rich should rightfully assume, leaves them paying outlandish amounts for school tuition, that has resulted in a vastly less mobile and just society than the one in which they were raised.
The response to that? What I see first hand is ever-more obsessive anxiety about money without any concomitant resolve to address the economic assault.