There's an old joke about a traveling salesman barging into someone's home, dumping dirt on the immaculate carpet, then selling the homeowner an expensive vacuum to clean it up.
The fossil fuel industry and other big carbon polluters are like that traveling salesman. But instead of merely dumping filth on our floor, they are reverse-vacuum-spewing carcinogenic, house-destroying compounds all over our ceiling (sometimes known as our "atmosphere").
And unlike the original salesman, these folks are not only refusing to clean up the mess, they are denying they made the mess in the first place. Moreover, whenever we attempt to point out the obvious, they send an army of ill-tempered pseudo experts to burst in our house and scream at us.
Salesman: Carbon Pollution didn't make that mess!
Us: But we saw you do...
Salesman: Your home looks better like that. We improved it!
Us: But you just said you..
Salesman: It's a hoax!
Us: But what would be the point of....
Salesman: Science is evil!
Us: But your industry is based on...
Salesman: Science is evil except for the kind that extracts fossil fuel from the ground! And the kind that lets me email!
Us: But that doesn't make sense. What about...
Salesman: Obamacare!
Us: Ob..wait, what?
And so it goes, on and on, like some sort of opium-fueled dialogue by Lewis Carroll.
Today is a good day to climb back through the looking glass.
The time has come to tune out the noise and tune in to the truth about the climate crisis (24 Hours of Reality).
Earth is our only home.
Climate change is happening.
Human-made carbon pollution is driving this change.
If we don't stop polluting, our home -- with its snow-capped peaks, brilliant blue seas and magnificent diversity of life -- will become catastrophically unrecognizable.
Don't buy what the salesmen are selling ("Doubt"), but don't despair.
We have the solutions at hand. Pizza party clean up time -- we can do it.
#CostOfCarbon @ClimateReality #24HoursOfReality