Adam Sacks has another excellent piece on Grist, wondering once again why nearly the whole world, even experts are in denial about the severity of climate disaster.

Maybe a thought experiment would be useful.. Could we imagine the mindset of people in Europe as the nazi invasion proceeded?

Now how about contrasting that with the attitude of americans at the start of WW II?

In Europe the blitz rolled, but that was far away for most americans.  Experts must have realized that catching up to nazi war technology and production seemed nearly impossible at that point.  The only course was to ignore the threat and hope the war would be confined to the continent.

Back to our future: As seawater levels rise and glacial water supplies melt, the famine, disease, and war due to forced migration will produce hell-scape many orders of magnitude worse than Katrina, the recent US experience with disaster.

Americans will bemoan the horror, and kick in adaptation efforts here, hoping the worst effects of disaster will be confined to other areas of the planet.

Do you remember what happened next way back in the last century?  Nazi tanks, planes, ships, and guns were all better than our instruments of war.  So why didn't they roll over the whole world, like they rolled over Europe?

Because the German war effort could not get the exponential growth effect into their factories. The assembley lines of Henry Ford, emulated by the rest of US industry, never really took off there.  German industry produced 1 tank for every 30 tanks made by US factories, the same for ships, planes, guns and so forth.  Our war material was inferior in performance for the most part, but we had so many times more equipment, fuel, food, and soldiers that we won.

We spread our assembley line technology to Russia too. 

The exponential effect of GHG climate change is extremely obscure to the media and general public.  Blame it on math and science illiteracy?  Maybe so, jornalists in general are english majors in college, separated since grade schoold from science geeks who revel in concepts like exponential growth.  Einstein said it, "the most powerful force in the universe is compound growth", we geeks live by statements like that from our childhood heroes.

Meanwhile the rest of humanity can only wonder why, so what?  Who cares about a math principle at the heart of the force of gravity itself.  Why should we care that it defines the very nature of life?  Cells divide and growth expands exponentially, thus life survives the battering of the titanic forces of our universe. Will media and public ever notice concepts like this?

Even when this principle explains exactly why GHG climate change is a real emergency.

Maybe the WW II analogy can get the point across?    We beat that threat with exponential growth employing mass production, the assembley line.

Adopt that powerful exponential manufacturing effect again, to face exponential climate disaster, and just maybe we'll have a chance.

The great part about this politically is we can sell the climate cure quietly to our small contingent of environmentally aware voters, and at the same time shout about the prosperity, jobs, and financial security and independence brought on by the new energy and ag economy.

So give some hope to those who understand the danger and despair, a very small percentage of us (maybe 10%?), by invoking that same concept that defines the disaster (exponential growth) and also holds hope for a solution that can match the ever increasing velocity of the catastrophe.

Renewable energy and organic agriculture can proceed exponentially with a commercial manufacturing boom.  It's really our best hope now.

We can sell it as an effort to maintain our economic security in a very competitive world.  We already have the support of the geekish enviro faction, the swing voters who vote jobs and family financial security are the ones we need to convince now.  They understand a humming assembley line and a factory parking lot full to capacity.  And a family checking account that doesn't bottom out from mortgage, credit card, car payments, insurance and on and on.

Maybe we need to understand their point of view?