To me, it seems the most common sense of conclusions: if you keep dumping any single thing into a confined space, eventually you’ll create a problem. Water is necessary for the human body. But drinking water to excess produces “water intoxication,” which causes drowsiness, muscle weakness, and in extreme cases, death. Oxygen is necessary for us to breathe. But an overly-oxygenated environment is highly flammable, resulting in danger to anyone who is present. And so it seems fairly self-evident that emitting too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere would eventually create a problem. Scientists understood that excess carbon dioxide in a confined space would produce warming by the mid-1800s, and they had made quantitative predictions about climate change before the turn of the 20th century. Fossil fuel companies studied climate change and predicted its current effects 50 years ago.  

This is not new science. It is not an outlandish idea. But in the face of punishing heat waves, torrential storms, and destructive wildfires, it is still contested. By some, its veracity is contested. By others, its degree. By still others, its remedy. The kind of contest is unimportant; the fact of the contest is what matters. A famous quotation whose authorship is disputed tells us, “It is difficult to get a person to understand something when their salary depends upon them not understanding it.” This is most especially true for fossil fuel corporations, their executives, their boards, and their shareholders. 

For the rest of us, we can alter this quotation slightly: “It is difficult to get a person to understand something when their worldview depends upon them not understanding it.” And it is that intersection of pecuniary interest for corporations and preservative interest for everyone else that creates our current stasis. Everyone fears change. Wealthy elites fear losing power. We fear losing everything. Or if we can’t conceive of that, we fear losing comfort. And those in fear react in a few common ways: They fight. They flee. They freeze. Our communal survival depends on us finding another way. 

If we process our fears healthily, we can react differently. We can use less but feel more. We can connect with one another rather than collecting more possessions. We can forgo accumulation and value relaxation. Rather than believing the corporatist lie that we are all alone and falling behind, we can create the truth that we are all together in having what we need. 

But this cannot just be a shift in mindset; it also must be a shift in power. This new way of thinking must allow us to come together in rejecting wealthy elites’ control of our economy, government, and society. We must take back our common power to eliminate their undue influence, eliminate their ability to buy elections, tax back their money into our shared coffers, and use our common wealth for the common good. 

As we do this, addressing the excessive emission of carbon dioxide and other substances becomes a matter of exercising that common power. When corporations no longer control either the power or the narrative, we can regulate pollution. We can ensure quality education for our youth. We can ensure that all people have adequate food, shelter, and healthcare. Common sense conclusions. Common sense actions.

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