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Climate change: our wilful blindness

By Lyn Bender - posted Monday, 11 March 2013


In 2005 many mocked Gore and his slideshow that showed Manhattan could be underwater due to storm surges. In 2012 he was able to superimpose pictures of the effects of Hurricane Sandy showing Manhattan awash

A blogger, Gabrielle Sierra, wrote about the floods in Manhattan Beach.

Her mother had quipped in response to evacuation warnings. We're not going. "If a tree falls I want to be here to hear it ."We are out of sliced ham, my mother tells me over the phone That is my biggest concern right now" After the flood she reports her mother saying. 'We didn't expect it to be that bad "

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As the signals get louder and seemingly unmistakable, we seem to get more blind and deaf. Like the woman living in Manhattan Beach we cannot comprehend the scale of a disaster until it is on our doorstep.

When confronted with impossible truth in the abstract, complex psychological protection comes into play. This is especially likely when we feel powerless to alter the course of a horribly unfolding scenario. We bargain. It won't be that bad. They will fix it somehow. It can't be that dire or they would do something about it. It's just a political beat up.

We deflect or distract and concentrate on problems we can manage. We worry about the economy. In short we avoid and deny the real dilemma. Like an alcoholic who keeps drinking, or a person with lung disease who keeps smoking, we reassure ourselves, that all is normal, by repeating old habits. Going on as usual.

This deafness and blindness is mirrored in our conversations dialogue and arguments.

The big events are seemingly unnoticed as we dissect and decry the latest mean and arrogant thing said by politicians. We focus on the minutiae of the small picture.

In contrast there has hardly been any attention paid to the progress of humungous fires in South Australia, We are paying far more attention to smutty jokes about Prime Minister Gillard spending five days in Rooty Hill Western Sydney.

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The citizens of Western Sydney are portrayed as suffering great hardship with house prices starting at $400,000 and over an hour to commute to work for some.

Climate change will make all our current lives seem like the Garden of Eden, even for those caught in congested traffic, in western Sydney. Meanwhile, we continue with our guiding paradigm of infinite growth, on a finite planet; as we anticipate the next century. The recent Commonwealth Asian White Paper, ignored Climate Change and its impact on its projections.

The fires this summer, in NSW have burned out 42,000 hectares; that's the size of Barbados. The South Australian fire has blackened 400,000 hectares, which is almost twice the size of the ACT.

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About the Author

Lyn Bender is a psychologist in private practice. She is a former manager of Lifeline Melbourne and is working on her first novel.

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