Dear Editor,
I have heard of there being a class of citizen who stubbornly clings to the historic orientation of fossil fuel extraction; while harboring a sense of resentment for feeling forgotten; wary of what is perceived as condescension coming from educated people looking down on them and telling them what to do – yet persistently resisting the potential for prosperity in the renewable energy sector.
It has been said that these same American citizens consider their hardships to be more significant, and their inadequacies more deserving than maintaining a healthy, sustainable planet.
“What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers?” Secretary of State and ex-ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson once asked. Rex is surely aware that sentimentality of self has festered into a deep seated belief that suffering comes when the future can’t be anything other than what it has already been.
Rex has smarts; he knows how to manipulate a mindset. Although, what he doesn’t have, is the right to create a narrative that compromises the lives of our children and their children’s children’s children’s children … through rising global temperatures, extreme weather patterns and stressing a planet that is already threatened by looming mass extinction unfolding faster than the five previously identified mass extinctions – all because of the measly inconvenience of giving up the gravy boat of ecological exploitation.
