¶ … doubt seen the most profound transformation of the human relationship with the natural world in the history of humankind," ("Great Acceleration," 2015). Technological and environmental progress has been a tremendous boon for humanity, but came at the price of environmental degradation and disaster. Looking back from the vantage point of 2117 to the success of sustainable economic growth around the world that occurred since 2017, it is a relief to see how humans were able to withstand the temporary, loud, but ultimately divisive and ineffective movements like the "Cooler Heads Coalition" that flourished around the time Obama was President of the United States.
Climate change denial organizations and other conservative coalitions resisted change and government interventions to the point where they were almost willing to sacrifice their grandchildren's planet and human welfare in general just for the sake of making their political opponents work harder. In a PBS Frontline episode about climate change denial, the narrator points out, "what these people call a fallacy has another name: 'the truth.'" The truth speaks volumes, and it is because the truth prevailed in climate change discourse around the world that human beings were able to steer away from the relatively small cohort of people that denied science simply so they could promote their vision of a small government in America. What really helped ensure progress around the world towards environmental sustainability was an international coalition that did not require as much participation by American conservatives. The shock and fear that gripped the world in the post-Trump era further catalyzed Americans into leaving behind their alternative facts and misinformation in favor of intelligent discourse and rational choice.
As an environmental geographer, I noted that key to shifting the discourse and policy on the environment around the world were books and media including The Madhouse Effect. Books written by credible analysts poured out during the Trump era in an attempt to stem the tide of anti-intellectualism in America. Knowledge about global warming and climate change permeated school curricula, to the point where
It was, after all, Americans that presented the main threat to inhibiting global climate change policies because relatively few people in the world denied science to the same degree as policy-driven Americans like those that support the "cooler heads coalition." It therefore took an important shift in consciousness away from anti-intellectualism towards an appreciation of scientific truth in order to change policy related to how industries minimize their emissions and promote sustainable practices. Also crucial in the change in America was the improvements made to education in the years following Trump. Moreover, it was important to show that legislation and policy related to climate change was not so much driven by politics as by fact, truth, and ethical responsibility. Improving access to information and ceasing the trend towards too much permissiveness towards conservatives also helped. The climate change deniers were revealed for what they were and admitted to being all along: politically motivated by a desire to keep government out of human lives.
The 2015 meeting in Paris that established the "2 degree" standard helped to quantify goals in a meaningful way, shifting the discourse to ways all countries and all industries could pull together in order to meet a reasonable goal. All industries recognized the challenge of working towards developing new technologies that could minimize reliance on fossil fuels, and this is what promoted the start of meaningful changes to the actual climate data and minimized harm. In fact, emissions control standards and cap-and-trade style legislation helped to reduce actual emissions and therefore prevent climate change from getting any worse. The effects were still evident, of course, in extreme weather events that initially precipitated alarmism among those who were previous climate change deniers. It was important to point out "human impacts on the Earth system do not operate in separate, simple cause-effect responses," ("Great Acceleration," 2015). This meant showing how climate change is more than just warming temperatures in one area; it means shifting weather patterns and leading to extreme cold as well as rising sea levels and storms.
As Plumer (2017) points out, there were three main components to the 2015 Paris meeting that helped to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and get our world back on track to the point we are not. First, the Paris meeting showed how to meet the 2 degree goal through global emissions cutting that were exponential: falling in half each successive decade…
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