If there were one motto that everyone should be required to contemplate, it's this one.
When they discover that we have tried fairly hard to reduce our footprint on the planet, people generally get apologetic and explanatory (as if I want to hear their excuses! but I try to be nice).
Generally there are two big strategic points - "Thing are fine, because he Earth is so big that humans can't really change it," and. "It doesn't make a difference, because we're doomed."
What really rots me is in the last five years, I've met a lot of people who start with, "Things are fine," but the moment any evidence is trotted out, they fold like a cheap suit and immediately jump to, "We're all doomed" - right from denial to despair, conveniently skipping over the "action" part.
This is wrong. A better world *is* possible.
A lot of the time I didn't know the material, and even in this case where I do, I always learn some exciting detail from your pieces. Keep up the good work!
So far all the articles I've seen about Prince Philip have been much nicer than he deserves.
Except yours. Yours was bang on.
I was pretty sick of the royals already, but when they wouldn't exert themselves to the slightest degree to prevent Brexit, I realized that they were permanent parasites who would never lift a finger to exert themselves, even when the health of their own country was in the balance.
(Obama sucking up to the royals is just business as usual for the empty suit. Obligatory disclaimer that the thoroughly mediocre Obama was still a lot better than the monster Trump.)
The "cloth mask to ward off evil death particles," or surgical mask, has a proven history of effectiveness for over a century.
Occam's Razor would look back at the past, see a series of pandemics going back to the dawn of history, and conclude that COVID was yet another one.
The fact that humans have done badly in the fight against COVID despite the inconsistent precautions we have taken certainly does not prove that things would have gone better if we hadn't taken the precautions.
One of the things that's very clear is that a sizable minority of the Western population will not cooperate with what would appear to be common sense public health measures because of deeply-held delusional worldviews. That some countries are pushing back is logical consequence of this horde of arrogant ignorant drooling mindless fuckwits who are a danger to themselves and others.
