I can’t speak for anyone else here, but I think few things are as enraging as the instant apathy that sets in among so many mainstream consumers as soon as some Big Event That Will Surely Change Everything is over. Take your pick: Katrina, 9/11, Europe’s 2003 heat wave, or, now, the BP Blowout. Think I’m exaggerating by adding the Gulf Gusher to that list so soon? Take a minute to read CNN/Fortune’s piece, The BP spill is already gone and forgotten:
BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster may have drawn more public attention than any other oil spill, but there’s a good chance that sordid history of spill cleanup efforts will repeat itself. That history is to bomb the crude with chemicals so it’s out sight, then place the incident out of mind once the slick appears to be gone.
The National Incident Command led by Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen put together a team of independent scientists and experts from government agencies. The group issued a report on the amount of oil left in the Gulf of Mexico, making the point that most of the oil has been cleaned up or biodegraded.
Apparently, only 26% is left to deal with from the original spill of 205 million gallons. The remaining oil that hasn’t washed ashore is below the surface of the water as a light sheen and balls, or buried in the sand, or even evaporated into the atmosphere. In other words: out of sight.
Traditionally, once oil is out of sight, the public push for follow-up studies disappears with it.
Unless you’re asking people who were directly affected by this environmental disaster, I’d guess that in no more than three years less than half of adult Americans will even be able to tell you what year the Blowout happened. (Quiz some stranger when you’re in line at the grocery store or Home Depot about what year 9/11 happened. I live in NY — you know, the state where it happened — and I’ve done this, and the results are as depressing as they are revealing.)
This is why I’m so pessimistic about the chances of a “Climate 9/11″ forcing us to “wake up” and take action on climate change. It would have to be such a gigantic, dramatic, and sudden event that there’s virtually no chance of it happening. About the only longer-lived thing that could do the trick would be an extremely fast melting of ice from Greenland and/or Antarctica that raised sea level enough in just a few years that it forced us to take emergency action to save/relocate major cities. And short of a big honkin’ meteorite hitting Antarctica, there’s just no way that will happen.
The complaint is that people have short memories on events like 9/11, Katrina, BP oil leak – but can you provide some examples on how to solve this dilemma? Most people have commented on it, complained about it, ranted and raved about it, boycotted the offenders, contacted our political reps, gave money or blood to causes, etc. What else is there to do – months and years after the fact?
Unless new information becomes available, there’s not really much people can do or say that doesn’t become shrill. And let’s face it, new catastrophes will come down the road. Do you think people who are still passionate about 9/11 should complain about the attention towards Katrina, BP, the Haiti earthquake?
No, I have no bloody idea how to get people to be less shortsighted. Do you?
“Do you think people who are still passionate about 9/11 should complain about the attention towards Katrina, BP, the Haiti earthquake?” Huh? I have no idea what you’re talking about here. I don’t want people to forget about 9/11 or anything else; I want them to be at least passingly aware of really big, important events, like 9/11 and Katrina and (after they happen) who knows what else that’s coming at us in the next few years and decades. My point is that there’s a large contingent of people in the climate blogosphere who keep saying, “we need a climate 9/11″, and I’m saying this is naive, as there’s no evidence that we could have an event big enough to serve that purpose that wouldn’t also indicate that we were hopelessly beyond help.