Conservative climate denial goes something like this: Scientists tell us that, to avoid climate catastrophe, we need big government to limit our freedom and prosperity to protect life on earth. As conservatives, we hate big government, and love freedom, prosperity, and the free markets that bring them. If the science requires we sacrifice that, the science must be wrong.
Progressive climate denial goes something like this: Scientists tell us that, to avoid climate catastrophe, we need big government to limit corporate power and protect life on earth. As progressives, we hate big corporations, and love the shared sustainable prosperity that government can require of them. If the science requires that we regulate corporations, the science must be right.
Keeping One Eye Open
So how do we get our power back from them?
The first step is to realize there is no them. Corporations and governments are not people. They are institutions, legal constructs we create so we can better serve each other.
People pay taxes to government, to pay other people and corporations for services. We pay corporations so they will pay other people and government for more products and services.
When people demand more but won’t spend the money for it, our institutions have ways to make us pay anyway. They borrow the money, usually from other institutions. Then, because institutions aren’t people, people are responsible for the debt.
Payback

Really, the debts are to our institutions. We owe domestic and international corporations, governments, NGOs, wealthy families, and all of the institutions of the political media money machine, all the money that they have spent on our behalf.
To pay them back, we now owe them our work, and our children’s work. We owe them a generous portion of our current and future labor, earnings, and savings, so that they can continue to provide the services that they perform for us. The question is, do we really think they’re doing as good a job at providing for our needs if in the process they have rung up this level of debt on our behalf?
If we cannot cut spending enough to erase the deficit, what can we do?
Join us at In This Together and sign the declaration of interdependence – we are ready to come together.