It’s a peculiar thing that as the threat of global terrorism reaches a crescendo, so apparently does the threat of global warming—at least that’s what some would have us believe.Ooooo! Show us your muscles - take you hats off!
Tough, national-security language is borrowed from the former and applied to the latter to make the case: "I really consider this a national security issue,” celebrity activist and “An Inconvenient Truth” producer Laurie David said, and hoped the film would serve as a “wake-up call.”
“Truth” star Al Gore calls global warming a “planetary emergency” and speaks of a clash between “civilization and the planet.”
Likewise, Bill Clinton’s “first worry” is climate change. “It’s the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it,” the reputedly intelligent ex-president told a World Economic Forum audience earlier this year. Leonardo DiCaprio, meanwhile, says we’re in the “11th Hour.”
No wonder that while Islamic terrorism claims lives by the thousands every year, Hollywood churns out movies about the menace of Joe McCarthy, the Crusaders, Israeli Mossad and Richard Nixon. Freud called it displacement.
Let’s be honest: people fixate on the environment when they can’t deal with real threats. Combating the climate gives the non-hawks a chance to look tough. They figure, “Let’s flex our muscle with this Mother Nature thing. Let’s take a preemptive strike at an SUV. Let’s show ‘em we can be tough too.”
This post was carbon neutral.
