By Rev. Robert Plaisted

Guest Columnist

A guy walks into a bar and spots his friend sitting at a table. “Hey, Jim,” he calls. “Did you hear the news? Astronomers just found intelligent life on another planet!” 

Jim looks puzzled and responds, “That’s funny. I didn’t know they’d found it on Earth yet.”

This column is about artificial unintelligence, commonly called ignorance. The remedy for simple ignorance is increased knowledge, but there is no remedy for willful ignorance — artificially imposed unintelligence. Editor David Sassoon of Inside Climate News wrote that, “we already can see what’s in store for us this season: scorching heat waves, dangerous wildfires, battering hurricanes.” But, that’s not quite right. Some of us can see what’s in store for us, while others choose not to see.

To illustrate, the first half of 2024 featured non-stop, horrendous weather. In Maine, we had three of the most destructive storms we’ve faced since weather records have been kept. We suffered upwards of $100 million in damages, much of it still not repaired. This spring, the South and West were ravaged by tornadoes, wildfires, torrential downpours and floods. NOAA has forecast potentially the most destructive Atlantic hurricane season in history. Record-breaking heat domes have spread from California to Labrador. Triple-digit temperatures now commonly begin in early June. 

2024 delivered perhaps the most miserable weather for the first half of any year in my lifetime. It’s a foretaste of the misery, which nature has in store for us humans in coming decades. Religious dogma and economic myths can’t help us avoid the future we’ve created for ourselves through our addiction to burning fossil fuels.  Carbon no longer is a creator of jobs or a savior of civilization. It has become our executioner, the Grim Reaper of capitalist folly. At this point, there’s little anyone can do about it, except to tell the truth. And so, I will, for as long as I can write Earth Notes columns.

Usually, when I write about our overheated climate, I’m hit with a barrage of brickbats and stink bombs from right-wing denialists. So be it. When there are no valid counter-arguments, hurling personal invective becomes their last resort. If those guys couldn’t rant about liberals and communists, they’d lose their whole purpose. Whining and complaining is their admission ticket to the social media universe.

When intelligent people see evidence that their ideas are wrong, they change their ideas. When artificially unintelligent people see evidence that their ideas are wrong, they deny the evidence. Climate change deniers are so brainwashed that they can’t draw obvious conclusions from the evidence of their own eyes. They’d rather believe Trump that this violent, destructive weather will just “go back the way it was.” 

Jesus said, “When you see clouds in the West, you know it will rain. When the South wind blows, you know it will be hot. Hypocrites! You know how to read the signs in heaven and on earth, but you can’t understand the signs of the times,” (Luke 12:54-56).

Rev. Robert Plaisted is a retired United Methodist clergyman, formerly of Bridgton and Bath, now residing in Auburn.