Who is responsible ?

This is obviously an important question. 

And the common answer to this question involves a revelation that we place the blame outside of ourselves. 

When I try to introduce the idea that people should be personally responsible for their carbon footprints, their minds reject it because it interferes with their addiction to perceive themselves as being virtuous. 

We have embraced that fact that second hand smoke is dangerous and therefore restricted smoking in public places. 

But hopping on a flight overseas and blowing 3-4 tons of CO2 per passenger which will remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years is somehow OK. To kill the future is OK. 

I have a name for this disease which I refer to by the acronym THIS. So THIS is the problem. 

THIS stands for Temporal Hierarchical Identity Syndrome. 

Temporal refers to time. 

So THIS means that we have a malignant societal disease which includes a belief that our experience TODAY is more important than the experience of the people who will inherit the shitty future we are leaving them. 

Less than 1% of the population knows their carbon footprint. The math is not complex and there are plenty of resources online to calculate yours. If you don't know yours, its because it's not important enough to you. 

If you tell yourself that you're too busy with other important issues like abortion or LGBTQ rights or gun control or whatever that are equally important ..... you're lying to yourself about your priorities.

Atmospheric carbon poisoning will harm and kill more people than all forms of identity discrimination combined. An educated person who genuinely cared about minority rights would put this issue above the distraction of divisive identity politics. 

I'm not sure if there will be history books available to us in a century or if there will be any people alive to read them. But if there are, the people who refused to know and understand their contribution to this problem will certainly be the villains in those stories just like the slaveholders of the American South. 

We are in the late stages of a planetary consumption orgy. The hangover is going to be a bitch. Maybe it's time that we let go of the villain role ??