This article attempts to answer that question, with mixed results. It focuses largely on the complexity of the science and the loathing that right-wingers have for most of the people trying to address the problem.
While I would agree that both of these are factors, I think that the author, like others before him, are overlooking an important failing: the unwillingness to outline the steps that are needed to combat climate change, and (above all) to do so in a way that shows how it can be done. More typically--and I'm including Al Gore in this assessment--they tend to take the approach of saying, over and over again, that This Is A Very Bad Problem, And Someone Should Be Doing Something About It.
Well, how would you respond to anything that's presented that way? You'd go out of your way to ignore it. Why should anyone of us feel vaguely burdened to try to save the world all by ourselves from a threat that all of us, in one way or another, are helping to create? And to do so without any idea of how to do it by ourselves?
What is needed is someone, or something, that can not only emphasize the need for collective action in a positive, patriotic way, but also emphasize (a) the individual steps that everyone can take, and (b) the collective benefits of taking those steps--abundant jobs in a sustainable economy, and independence from regimes that hold us hostage to their limited resources?
It really is that easy. Mr. Gore, had you done this in 2000, you might have been elected President and the history of the 21st Century thus far might have been very different. Well, personally, I think it's not too late for things to be different. It had better not be that different. Because the article does, very effectively, make one very salient point that we ignore at our peril: it is close to midnight for our climate and our planet, and there is no fairy godmother to rescue us.
There is only ourselves. I pray that it will be enough.
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