My friend and Lesley classmate Celine McElvery recently presented her thesis on climate change and peak oil. This analogy of the current debate (found on pp68-69 of her thesis) is worth reading.
'Feeling a bit under the weather for a while, you visit your physician who sends you to a specialist. This specialist conducts many tests which indicate a very strong likelihood (greater than 95%) of a rare disorder with an alarmingly poor prognosis if left untreated. Naturally, you seek a second opinion, which only reaffirms the initial finding. In fact, the condition you have is so rare that while many specialists have studied it at length, none have actually treated this disorder before. However, 96 of the 100 global experts on this disorder are quite certain you do indeed suffer from it, although they aren‟t quite as sure about the prognosis. The remaining 4 are not able to reassure that you don’t have the disorder only that they think it unlikely that you do.
While the treatment is quite expensive and will require some dramatic lifestyle changes, the sooner you begin treatment, the cheaper it is and the far better your prognosis. And even if you want to hold out hope that perhaps by some miracle all of these experts are wrong, the treatment, beyond being quite expensive, has no ill side-effects – on the contrary, it will make you healthier regardless. However, should you delay treatment, it becomes exponentially more costly and the prognosis quite dim, even fatal. Additionally, just when you thought this couldn‟t get any worse, you are informed that it is genetic and that all three of your children have it as well – left untreated, their prognosis is even poorer than yours. The good news is that it isn‟t any more expensive to treat them in addition to yourself, and because of their youth, they are more readily adaptable to the necessary lifestyle changes.
Your accountant, health insurance provider, and the school nurse argue that the expense is exorbitant especially for a previously unseen, and therefore questionable, disorder.
What do you do?"
From: Re-Framing the Conversation:
Perceptions & Strategies for Communicating with Business Leaders Regarding
Climate Change & Peak Oil, Celine McElvery (2009) Thesis, Lesley University.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Nice try and if the smoking icebergs of climate gate are not enough to doubt us having to continue to threaten our kids with death, then you DO have another agenda. Ignoring climate gate proves your agenda as political not science because REAL ENVIRONMENTALISTS would be happy about ending the world's longest emergency.
Climate change is dividing environmentalism because we all know that unless this climate crisis starts affecting us soon, the theory is ultimately headed for a wall. It's completely unsustainable when you climate doomers and climate cowards keep promising death of the planet Earth. That's an all in and the people of the planet are asking you to cover the bet. You can't.
It's not a conspiracy, it's a mistake and if we as progressives don't own up to it soon, climate change will be to the left what WMD's were to the neocons.
You are the denier and stop scaring my kids!!!!!!!!!!!
mememine69@hotmail.com
Post a Comment