(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Mark, while you’re sidelined by Ukraine, we’re losing the MOTHER of All WARS! HELP US! [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-11 Mark, while you’re sidelined by Ukraine, we’re losing the MOTHER of All WARS! HELP US! Mark, in 2020 your pandemic posts made plain to me your high level of communication skills, as well as your deep sense of compassionate civic responsibility, and your Ukraine coverage has cemented my esteem. I believe that the best form of homage is through honest feedback, pro or con. Please accept these observations of your comment (below) to Peter Olant’s post as being offered in that spirit of constructive candor. Your comment: “It’s easy to say why we don’t write as much about the climate as we’d like to—people don’t read climate stories. Stories about the climate crisis routinely get the lowest numbers for readers and lowest levels of response of everything that appears on Daily Kos. Is that frustrating? Yep. Is it tragic? Absolutely. Does that mean Daily Kos is just following the “click bait” to write about things that draw in eyeballs at the expense of the world? Not really. It means more effort is put on things where people are paying attention, because if you elect people who care about human rights, equality, diversity, and free elections, those people also — thank God — tend to care about the environment. So stories shift to where people at least seem to be paying attention. But that’s the easy out. I absolutely agree that this is not enough. We need to hit it more. We are losing the messaging war on the climate crisis. It’s hard to think of a bigger failure than surrendering on an existential threat. Right now, all I can think is: We’re doing it wrong. Here’s an issue that not only speaks to protecting people’s futures, and that of their children, but affects everything from the value of their homes to their future occupation. Immigration is the climate crisis. War is the climate crisis. The economy is the climate crisis. Why can’t we get that across? How did it come to pass that people are so f***ing bored with something so vital that they won’t bother to spend three minutes reading an article, much less take action? There has to be a way. There has to be an angle, an approach, that generates not just “yes, I tick that box on a poll” but “yes, I pay more attention to this than getting mad about what Marjorie Taylor Greene said today.” If there’s anything that could be done right now that would be a genuine breakthrough, it would be developing messaging that makes people care about the climate, as much as people claim they care about the climate. I take it as a personal failure that I haven’t found that message. But man, I would be ecstatic if someone else could.” I find your comment both heartfelt and unintentionally disingenuous. Reading between the lines reveals a lack of awareness of the current state of the climate emergency and the horrendous ramifications that will result if we don’t get it under control. “There has to be a way” Mark, how about starting with you and Kos becoming involved instead of leaving it up to disenfranchised and demoralized volunteer posters to go it alone. Though not intentional, it becomes increasingly unconscionable for you to stand on the sidelines while DK is floundering in its response to the single most critical political issue in history. People aren’t ‘bored’ of climate posts, they are subliminally terrified by climate collapse and don’t have what it takes to face it. They are in various stages of denial and looking for the nearest exit. And without meaning to, you and Kos provide them with a liberal daily helping of the second-best thing: distraction. They can come up with a thousand shabby excuses for shunning climate information exposure, but ‘somehow’ continue to evade the one reason for becoming engaged: SURVIVAL. “Does that mean Daily Kos is just following the “click bait” to write about things that draw in eyeballs at the expense of the world? Not really.” Actually, that is, in terms of its impact on climate pro-action, exactly what it means. Not only do the algorithms of the site stifle climate discourse because it is not ‘clicking’ with the readers, but climate articles never show up in ‘community spotlight’ although many considerably less important low-rec posts do, and until recently ‘climate/environment’ was not even on the hashtag bar. “If there’s anything that could be done right now that would be a genuine breakthrough, it would be developing messaging that makes people care about the climate, as much as people claim they care about the climate.” If I could come up with a formula for making climate collapse engaging to readers in denial about climate, I’d also be chit-chatting with the MAGAs about politics over lunch at our favorite eatery. What actually needs to be done right now is to enable the DK climate community to coalesce and mount a multi-pronged offensive with you and Kos leading the charge. This way we might have a chance to effect change, politically and sociologically. We need to put our heads together and make climate, not appealing, but compelling, because it will soon be very much so. Whether you and Kos realize it, climate collapse can blow DK away, so it is in your best interests to start taking this personally. Deeper involvement will quickly bring you up to speed, providing you with the perspective necessary to offer something better than sincere but half-baked excuses and ill-conceived solutions to throw on the frustration pyre. Right now, climate action on DK is a form of trench warfare, and we need your leadership to help us get out of the mud and mount an offensive response. No one would be more disappointed than me if this kept you from covering the Russian illegal war, but by finding the time to join real fighters in a very real and far greater WAR that we are incredibly close to losing, all of your efforts, on all fronts, would take on exponentially greater depth and value. “It means more effort is put on things where people are paying attention, because if you elect people who care about human rights, equality, diversity, and free elections, those people also — thank God — tend to care about the environment.” This is literally the equivalent of a Russian conscript going into battle with a broken gun, especially when considering the enormity of this threat. In this case, “tend to care” is so nebulous it unsettles me. “Care” especially in politics gets bantered around so much and backed up by action so little as to have become virtually meaningless. Even well meaning politicians need to hear from their constituents, aggressively, to spur them into taking action, otherwise the ‘day to day’ takes precedence. Your reasoning here also reflects an ingrown acceptance of climate as the runt of the litter, which, although I understand why this so, the irony of it still rankles me. We are nearly out of time to even have a slim chance of moderating climate collapse and you appear to have resigned yourself to a system which will practically assure Armageddon, rather than committing to trying to change the status quo come hell or high water…because that’s exactly what’s headed our way. Since you and Kos have been focused elsewhere on more safely absorbing, but ultimately less important matters, this has somewhat insulated you from the stark reality of climate collapse as it unfolds, and as a result, you each exhibit signs of both climate denial and cognitive dissonance. Denial, because you are not seriously engaged with climate collapse efforts on DK and therefore clearly do not fully comprehend the extraordinary level of this threat, and dissonance because you both give the appearance of living in a split reality in which the threat to our planet seems to have no baring on the reconstruction and long term survival of Ukraine. In fact, such references to a post war future appear repeatedly in your reports, while at the same time the global and localized effects of environmental destruction scarcely warrant an oblique mention. This subconscious disconnect is the very definition of cognitive dissonance. The truth is, climate collapse has the ability to stop the illegal Russian war dead in its tracks and within a handful of years reshape the world, physically, sociologically and economically in catastrophic ways, before utterly destroying it all together. 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