If there were a Clueless Curmudgeon award (perhaps a likeness of Mr. Magoo) John McClaughry’s editorial tirade against plans for the upcoming Climate Strike would place him in strong contention.
He doesn’t think Vermonters like himself should be “inconvenienced” by high school students’ efforts to call attention to the threat climate inaction brings to their very real future…a future put in peril by prior generations of Americans’ inability to deny themselves any convenience or passing pleasure, regardless of its impact on the long-term survival of the biosphere.
Belonging to the Trump universe, in which America’s inherent ‘superiority’ means preternatural entitlement, Mr. McClaughry doesn’t even appear to understand to what the concept of climate justice refers.
He even has the nerve to invoke Rosa Parks as an example of what he considers an acceptable method of protest, presumably because he thinks Rosa Parks didn’t ‘inconvenience’ anyone with her historic ride. I doubt the bus driver would have agreed; otherwise, why did he have Ms. Parks arrested and jailed? Presumably Mr. McClaughry would object to the subsequent Montgomery Bus Boycott, as that act of civil disobedience most certainly inconvenienced a great many people!
‘Too bad that righting systemic wrongs sometimes demands sacrifice, and always requires ‘inconvenience.’
Mr. McClaughry sneers at science, erroneously suggesting that the only evidence of anthropogenic climate impacts relied upon by activists is the extreme weather we are increasingly experiencing. Although such evidence is pretty compelling, the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community is not based on empirical evidence alone but is reinforced by carefully collected data, analyzed according to accepted principles, steadily growing in volume and urgency. If science isn’t to be relied upon, what does Mr. McClaughry suggest as a substitute, and what evidence can he provide that his substitute would be more reliable?
No; he doesn’t bother to go there. He just proclaims that acting on what the scientific community is telling us would be inconvenient and therefore, we should choose the easier route of denial, regardless of the consequences.
That’s fine for him. He assumes he won’t live long enough to be ‘inconvenienced’ by Climate Catastrophe. Would that that were so! A few more summers of arctic wildfires like we just had and we may see projections on planetary collapse moved-up by half a century.
And I promise you, nuclear energy won’t look so attractive to Mr. McClaughry when the melting permafrost releases not just CO2 and methane, but all that hidden radioactive waste buried improperly in Siberia.
Inconvenient? I should think so!