Out of the mouth, of primates — How Climate Change is Rewriting Our Future

Political Primate on Youtube
Transcription and highlights, KJG

The clock is ticking—and our planet is sounding the alarm louder than ever. From raging wildfires to devastating floods, climate change is no longer a distant threat; it’s a global emergency happening right now.

Ah, climate change. Behold the great paradox of our age. Ours is the first civilization with the knowledge to foresee its own demise, and the genius needed to schedule meetings about it well into the apocalypse. We clutch at plastic straws and reusable bags with a fervor that would make a medieval monk proud, convinced redemption is just a recycling bin away. Meanwhile, the planet broils like a lobster in a pot.

Though, if you listen to the excitable PR departments of oil companies, you’ll hear that everything is fine. After all, what’s a little atmospheric rearrangement among friends? And what are the consequences of our collective inertia? A warming world punctuated by fires, floods, and famines. The most vulnerable, of course, suffer first and loudest, while those responsible spend their weekends on ever drier golf courses, toasting the tradition of progress with water shipped from somewhere wetter.

Our modern economic wisdom decrees, “Privatize the profits, socialize the cataclysms. If your city sinks or your crops fail, it isn’t the market’s fault. It’s just a new and exciting opportunity for growth, perhaps in the business of inflatable rafts or desalination plants. The pinnacle of this farce, the very architects of climate disaster are hailed as responsible world citizens so long as they give the keynote at Davos and drive a hybrid between the helipad and the yacht.

So, let us raise a glass to the ingenious denial of our age. A world gone mad, led by people too clever by half to acknowledge the very inferno they’ve built. When the last habitable patch of Earth is auctioned off to the highest bidder, I trust we’ll organize a conference, publish a moving statement, and close with a rousing chorus of we did our best. In this at least we might achieve unity if not survival.

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