We’re Literally Driving Ourselves to Destruction: Irresponsibility, Stupidity, or Both?

The planet is in the midst of the hottest summer ever recorded; with every likelihood that within a decade, we’ll remember it bitterly as one of the more bearable. Extreme weather events such as forest fires, heat waves, flash flooding, and hurricanes are increasing, threatening more and more people, and not just in the developing world.

The evidence of the climate emergency is all around us: the global scientific community is in total agreement that more than a century of industrialization based on the abuse of fossil fuels has released colossal amounts of gases that have warmed the planet, as well as fouling the air we breathe with toxins that damage our lungs and other organs. Scientists estimate that air pollution from fossil fuels kills between one and ten million people each year.

And yet, our governments continue to subsidize the fossil fuel industry at record levels, according to a report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD): $1.4 trillion by 2022, despite the good intentions and agreements to reduce them reached at the Glasgow climate summit just two years ago.

No less than $1 trillion in subsidies, $322 billion in investments by state-owned companies and $50 billion in loans from public financial institutions, not including the allocation of new operating permits. In short, we continue to lie being fed lies; that we can’t damage growth, that it’s okay to keep running our cars, because our governments will subsidize prices with public money that goes straight into the pockets of the oil companies. Cheaper gasoline so we keep voting for them. We all want cheap gasoline, and we’re prepared to see the planet burn before we change our ways.

Since 2020, which marked a decline in fossil fuel subsidies as a result of the pandemic, the amount of money being pumped into keeping alive an inefficient and polluting economy has continued to rise, despite the devastating impact of the climate emergency. Fossil fuels are more expensive and more inefficient, but instead of seeing them for what they are, an obsolete and dangerous technology, we continue to support their use. It is perfectly possible to triple renewable energy production between now and 2030, but that goal is being jeopardized by governments that prefer instead to continue to support and subsidize the fossil fuel industry. If the money spent on these subsidies were dedicated to the development of clean substitute technologies, we could really make a difference, but instead, we consciously choose not to.

The metaphor couldn’t be more powerful: we are fueling an engine that is driving us faster and faster towards our own destruction. Is it irresponsibility, stupidity, or a combination of both?

(En español, aquí)

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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