Dying To Deny Climate Change

RUSH LIMBAUGH has often said, and still says, that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by liberals, and that the human species is so insignificant in the greater context of nature that we are incapable of having any real impact on the environment. This, although our present age has been designated by scientists as the "anthropocene", the age of man, the age of human domination, control, and reshaping of the planetary environment. Climate deniers, like rush Limbaugh, are almost entirely concentrated among older people, baby boomers and beyond. Millennials, while deeply immersed in their forms of fantasy, tend on the whole to understand basic chemistry and to accept the reality of climate change and the causal connections between added atmospheric carbon and heat retention. People inherently tend to resist whatever truths they perceive inimical to their own perceived interests. Millennials also exhibit a trend towards renunciation of material wealth, and concern for the environment; but, alas, so did the baby boomers, long ago, before they became rich. Donald Trump will almost certainly be the final American president to be a climate change denier; it is inconceivable that America would elect another, as the millennials assume more power and the older generations fade away. When the baby boomer generation is gone, future generations will marvel that there was ever a time when a substantial portion of the population denied climate change. irrefutable facts, overwhelming evidence will at length force people to change their beliefs, but research has shown that the process takes about two years, at best. Our beliefs are deeply held, and resistant to reason. The parents of the baby boomers never fully embraced the fact that cigarettes kill people, and that seat belts save lives. by the time they started to, it was too late for them. About half the baby boomers will forever deny climate change, unto the very day when they lay on their death bed, on some warm January day, not far in the future.