When Will Humanity Have Its ‘I Could Have Had a V-8 Moment’ on the Climate Crisis?

Yes that is most definitely a Boomer reference. So GenX, Millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha can better understand the reference to hit one’s forehead and exclaiming “I could have had a V-8”, here is an advertisement from 1978

and one that assumes you know the metaphor of the hit on the forehead:

I actually made a TEDx talk around this. Back in February 2021, at the height of Covid, I did short talk for this virtual event:

So the question is when will humanity have its V-8 moment of realization that ‘ the other guy’ ‘China’, ‘big oil’ is not the problem……we are!

When the way Americans are living is taking the equivalent of five Earths to support and each American is responsible for 16 tons of pollution into the atmosphere every year, the obvious-hit-the-forehead realization is that we are the problem, not ‘them’.

Those that warned that there would be massive consequences of humanity’s reliance on fossil fuels – scientists, environmentalists, naturalists – were clear decades ago that a consequence of this continued use would case global warming with the results being increased extreme weather, extreme heat, droughts, floods. So all the negative effects of global warming continue to happen until humanity hits its metaphorical forehead and realizes that we are the problem.

I could have had a V-8

I could have put solar panels on my roof

I could have bought an EV

I could have reduced, reused, recycled more

I could have created compost to fertilize the garden and yard

I could have voted for a political candidate who is concerned about facing the climate crisis.

I could have given larger donations to the climate non-profit organization.

Words

The words we use to describe the climate crisis are important. I no longer use the phrase ‘climate change’ as it sounds too benign. Instead, I use the phrases ‘climate crisis’ and ‘climate catastrophe’ as they are more accurate words to describe the level of damage being done. The level of species extinction the past 10 years has been more than 1,000 times the average of the last million years. There will soon be a massive El Ninõ that will cause heat events and droughts and floods globally. The world economy is on life support because of Trump’s war with Iran due simply to the closing of a body of water through which some 20% of all oil passes daily. Hmmm, would that not make people more inclined to move to clean energy that has no geopolitical aspects to it?

Please use the words crisis and catastrophe rather than change. Please consider reducing your tonnage of CO2 below 16 tons annually. Look at transportation, heating and air conditioning, and how you consume.

When will we hit our collective forehead about the accelerating climate catastrophe?

One more Boomer reference that works here. When I first learned that each and every American is responsible for 16 tons of CO2 a year, the very first thing that came to mind was Tennessee Ernie Ford: