still is the written word

A Case for Revenge

In the late 1970s, Climate scientists came to the conclusion that the Earth’s climate was changing. Of this they were 100% certain. They also determined that this change had an anthropogenic cause. Of this too they were 100% certain. The Earth was warming, and people were responsible. And they were 100% right.

So what happened? Or, more accurately, what didn’t happen, and why? Why did the human race just go on blindly marching towards the cliff, increasing its carbon output year after suicidal year? Didn’t people love their children? Didn’t they want the human race to survive?

The 1980s should have been the decade of innovation. During that time batteries, solar power, wind power, wave power, geothermal power, maybe even nuclear power, should have been researched and developed to move us away from a carbon economy. The 1990s should have been a decade of deploying these technologies, and for the Western world to deploy these technologies in Asia, Africa, and South America for drastically reduced cost, if not for free. The naughts (2000+) should have been the decade of integration and adjustment, and by 2010 the entire world should have been almost completely weaned from its reliance on hydrocarbons. Global warming halted, climate catastrophe avoided.

So what happened?

In the 1950s medical science determined smoking cigarettes was killing people at an astounding rate. They were 100% certain. Combined with the other medical issues smoking caused, the economic and human cost of this addiction was mind-boggling. But instead of getting people to stop smoking, PR firms and the tobacco industry conspired to lie to the public, to make it seem as if there was a debate about the health effects of smoking. This confusion allowed them to maintain business as usual. Tobacco companies kept raking in billions of dollars a year, and tens of thousands of people kept getting sick and/or dying. This ruse, of contrasting the scientific truth with a lie, worked for over 40 years, until the pile of dead bodies was simply too huge to cover up.

Enter Global Warming. The profitable (if murderous) tobacco strategy had been incredibly successful. So the same tactic was employed, and it worked as well, for 40 years as well, until the effects of the pending climate catastrophe became obvious to the public. But now it is too late. Our carbon economy will now run the human race right off a cliff. Those who made all that profit for the last 40 years, those hundreds of billions of dollars, will sleep rich and snug in their beds, and die without having to face the Apocalypse they have wrought. They will die rich and smug, flipping their middle fingers at the future, and our children.

I was originally going to title this “A Case for Justice”. But as I thought about it, there can be no justice. There is no crime with which to accuse these people. We would have to create a new one: auto-speciescide. Attempting to deliberately cause the extinction of your own species.

I want these assholes dragged out of their mansions, from their yachts with little mini yachts inside them, and off their private jets, down into filthy holes where they can rot as the human race dies around them. Let them watch through bars as our children are left alone to face the Apocalypse. I don’t want justice. I want revenge.

1 Comment

  1. Ross

    every day i am increasingly mystified at why we haven’t brought the guillotines back. ever since the early to mid 20th century socialist revolutions, the capitalists and power brokers have learned too well how to keep us sniping at each other over petty concerns instead of realizing our common cause against them. we squabble as we go off the cliff. we have already gone over the edge and like the coyote are only beginning to understand we’re already starting to fall. they have learned the lessons of the ancien regime, to defang us by keeping us just comfortable enough to be afraid to lose what we have, and just desperate enough to jealously guard what we have from our neighbours, to keep us in a scarcity mindset and blame those around us, our equally powerless brothers and sisters, for the inequities they have wrought and continue to intensify. they have learned to keep us ever distracted from what matters, mcdonald’s and netflix, skip the dishes and the marvel cinematic universe, modern bread and circus to distract us from how we are being robbed and killed every day.

    when justice is no longer possible, revenge is all we have left.

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© 2024 kim aaron

still is the written word

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