Tuesday, September 03, 2013

Latest Hysteria

PANIC UPDATE

The latest scare story making the rounds on the Internet is the contention that the oceans are acidifying “at the fastest rate in 300 million years.”

This is the kind of thing it takes only a moment of thought to wonder about. Not 30 years—which no doubt has been measured. Not 300 years, which might be questionable, but okay. No. The promoters of this one go all the way. 300 MILLION years! Ohmygod! Help!

The public today is so braindead unquestioning about media hype that many of them accept this on face value. Needless to say, we have no real way of knowing what was happening 300 million years ago. Or 30 million years ago, for that matter. It’s all guess work—but enough to set a mass movement upon, and hold colorful demonstrations in unthinking places like San Francisco filled with the need-to-believe heal the planet mob.

Not that they’ll change anything about their San Fran lifestyles. It’s gesture politics to make them feel good—in the same way that lobbing a few missiles at Syria is a gesture intended to make us—or someone—feel good. We—he—did something. Now let’s continue what we were otherwise doing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Would you do a post on which lit mags/journals you feel publish the most meaningful work right now? I don't mean the highest praised writing, or more prestigious, but most relevant and interesting.