2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #20

A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, May 12 through Sat, May 18, 2019

Editor's Pick 

12 excuses for climate inaction and how to refute them

Using moral clarity to counter defeatism around the climate crisis.

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There’s a reason why the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has successfully goaded powerful politicians into long-overdue climate action in just six months.

Thunberg, who is on the autism spectrum, has become a moral authority. Again and again, she’s clearly articulated how adults have shamefully abdicated their basic duties to protect today’s children and future generations from compounding climate catastrophe. “This ongoing irresponsible behavior will no doubt be remembered in history as one of the greatest failures of humankind,” she told the British Parliament.

“You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess, even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake. You are not mature enough to tell it like is. Even that burden you leave to us children,” she declared at the United Nations.

Her ability to sway politicians and the public, in speeches and through the school strike movement, is now evident: European leaders have called for aggressive new carbon emissions reductions, citing her movement.

Fortunately, Thunberg is just one of many great minds helping us summon moral clarity to address the tricky problem of framing the climate crisis. That includes the writers David Wallace-Wells, George Monbiot, and Anand Giridharadas; the historian Jill Lepore; and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), among many others.

As we dump more carbon into the atmosphere and the planet cooks, their arguments about what we’re up against — and why we must act now — are essential to cutting through the ties that keep us quiescent.

These thinkers have inspired us to overcome our own psychological roadblocks in facing the climate crisis. The words of writer James Baldwin are helpful here too: “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

 Drawing from these and other wells of wisdom, we’ve put together 12 short answers to some of the most stymying questions to help you work through climate despair, cynicism, defeatism, and paralysis. We can’t delay any more; it’s past time for productive panic.

12 excuses for climate inaction and how to refute them by Eliza Barclay & Jag Bhalla, Energy & Environment, Vox, May 17, 2019 

Links posted on Facebook

Sun May 12, 2019

Mon May 13, 2019

Tue May 14, 2019

Wed May 15, 2019

Thu May 16, 2019

Fri May 17, 2019

Sat May 18, 2019

Posted by John Hartz on Saturday, 18 May, 2019

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