Well, When You Put It That Way

Good news. Investment in coal and gas-fired power plants fell to less than half the investment in renewable, clean energy production.  That sounds better than it is.

With more rapid-onset climate change impacts becoming the norm lately, we are in a race. It's a race for the future and there's only one prize - survival. You either come in first and win it or you don't, you lose. Which makes you wonder why we're putting so little effort into getting ahead of the problem.

I'm sure we would like to win. Why would we want to lose? That makes no sense - except when you look at it in the worst possible way. When you look at it as sacrificing today for the benefit of a future generation then it runs afoul of the "What's In it For Me?" test, the WIiFM. It doesn't even register on the Immediate Gratification Scale, or IGS even in metric. It also invokes the ever present but rarely acknowledged Not On My Tax Bill syndrome, NOMTB, a distant cousin of NIMBY.

Put them all together - WIiFM, IGS and NOMTB - and you have powerful corroboration of the theory that all intelligent life is ultimately self-extinguishing which may explain why you don't see vegetables from distant galaxies on the produce aisle of your grocery store. They didn't make it either.