Climaticide: The "True Name" of the Thing.

I had not been aware of the environmental/climatological work of blogger "Johnny Rook" at his blog, "Johnny Rook’s Climaticide Chronicles, until this morning, when I was directed thither by Down With Tyranny who presents a touching homage (a sort of pre-eulogy) to the courageous environmental crusader.

And now it appears I have found this site almost too late, because the eponymous/synonymous creator of the site is apparently struggling for life against some fell disease (unspecified, but fatal) even as we speak, and he may not even live through this weekend. DWT provides context, but the important words belong to the subject, Johnny Rook. The post is long, and I have abstracted it for presentation here. These seem to me to be the money grafs:

Of all the insanities that bedevil human beings on this planet none is greater than global warming. Only all out nuclear war poses as grave a danger to the planet and human civilization. Ironically, the former, if we fail to check it, may lead to the latter–a two-for-one sale at the Armageddon store, if you like.

I’m not confident that we are going to survive this. I’m positive that we won’t survive unscathed because the harm has already begun and we still haven’t done anything to reduce CO2 emissions. And here’s the question that keeps haunting me: If we won’t stop genocide in Darfur or provide universal health coverage in the United States, two horrible but much simpler cruelties, why should any one think that we will deal adequately with global warming? We are already way behind and likely to fall farther behind because we have waited so long to begin and because the necessary sense of urgency is still not there. Witness the hearings in DC on S 2191, Joe Lieberman and John Warner’s trillion dollar giveaway to the nation’s biggest polluters. This is not a measure to stop global warming, it is simply “green” pork barrel politics. Business as usual in drag.

The changes required of us are enormous. A little biofuel and a few CFLs aren’t going to do it. We can no longer live as we have and we have only been able to live as we have because we have borrowed so much from the future. We are way over the limit on our Gaia Visa card and the penalties and fees are going to be enormous. We can’t declare bankruptcy either, because in this case bankruptcy equals death.

I love the earth. I have delighted in it for 53 years and I hope to live here for a while longer. My doctor has told me that I’m not going to die today and I’m glad. But if I have to die anytime soon it will be a lot easier if I can go knowing that we have truly accepted reality and are making the radical changes in how we live that are required. If we take the necessary measures to stop global warming and to live sustainably the world that our children and grandchildren will live in will be unrecognizably different from our own. And if we don’t take those necessary measures the world that our children and grandchildren will live in will also be unrecognizably different from our own.

The previous text was written in 2007. The penultimate paragraph of DWT's account concludes:

To honor him, to honor his passion, to honor his commitment, take a few moments to click to Climaticide Chronicles … Perhaps to begin with his first post at this site that he started just last June: "Why call it climaticide? The power of calling things by their true names."

I use the term Climaticide because it is the true name of the crisis that threatens us. As the poet Thich Nhat Hanh has shown, calling things by their true names makes us aware of their complexity and wary of simplistic solutions.

The last post on the Climaticide site was dated Feb. 18, and describes Spanish researchers' reports that the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica has collapsed and sundered.

It has occurred to me that the climate-change skeptics, the 'denialist' ("de nihilist?") strain in public discourse, particularly virulent among the fundie/xianist fucktard Right, is regarded by them as a kind of rebuke to the growing influence of atheism and the diminishing authority of 'the gods.' It's as if the delusional bible-babblers were saying, "If there's no God, no Heaven, no Debil, then fuck the world."

Is that the "true" face of Christianity at work? I guess.