stars all seem to weep
Not to minimize, you know, global-fucking-catastrophe, but I have to wonder sometimes if this couldn't be better articulated.
While teevee lesbo kisses are hardly on par with melting glaciers - in fact, if the Campaign for the Promotion of Public Displays of Lesbian Affection (CPPDLA) came to Denver, I'd be the first to make a donation and put a banner up on the blog - my guess is many people don't respond to calls for supporting crusading environmentalism or backing ecological legislation for much the same reason they might shrug off the right's apoplexy over sexy T.V.: not only does it not show up on the radar, it's talked up all hysterical, AND IN ALL CAPS, the end is nigh. A fail-yah to communicate, as the man said.
For example, here's a line from the linked article above:
The World Bank estimates that with a 50-centimeter rise in sea level...
Hit your space bar if you can tell me, without having to count it out or think too hard, what a centimeter is. Hit it twice if you can say what 50 of them looks like.
Again, this is in no way, shape, or form meant to minimize any sort of analysis or prediction; however, with the very recent exception of the environmental justice movement - which just may end up saving us all - the environmental and ecological movements, all the way across the board, fail again and again so miserably in many respects for a lack of being able to approach people with a kind of common tongue we all share. Why not start relating enviro-ruin in images and concepts people can see or grasp, like the muck left in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina's devastation and the decades of neglect? Or just how global it's going to cost your family, now and in the future, in taxes and at the supermarket? How about making it clear what kind of role class will play in the looming environmental crises?
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