Road 50, Days 3 and 4

Climate sceptics, I understand some of their motivations

Photo: C. Matile

Sorry for not having witten yesterday. We arrived at around 8PM in Hannibal, having driven all the way from Chicago. A long day. When we arrived, we had to organize our camper for the first night, not an easy task.

Today we drove from Hannibal to Independence, in the neighborhood of Kansas City, another long day on the road. For the first time, we drove on Road 50, the road that will bring us to San Francisco. We are feeling the excitement of being on the road again.

On the way to Independence, I understood why some Americans, especially in the countryside may be climate sceptic. Indeed, from Hannibal to Independence, we saw only fields, on both sides of the road. Fields and very few cars and trucks. Fields and very few houses, villages or cities. Just a more or less straight road and nothing but fields.

Compare this to Europe. In Switzerland for example, it is almost impossible to drive 5 minutes without seeing a house, a village, a city. The road is so crowded that oftentimes the average speed on the highway is about 40 miles, 40 miles per hour on the highway. Driving is very stressful to the the much higher speed and the number of cars, trucks and buses on the road. At night, the sky gets polluted by the light of the cities, at day, by the chimneys of the production companies. Available space is very limited. Owning a piece of land to build a house is a real treasury.

If I lived somewhere on the land between Hannibal and Independence, I would be climate sceptic. I would not understand why I have to be careful with my CO2 footprint while living in a world of green fields, nature and emptiness.

If we are not careful, we run the risk to misunderstand the motivations of this type of climate sceptics and to feed them to Trumpmania. He will use them, he will abuse them. They will let him abuse them, because they will think that he understands them. Let us start working on a common agenda. It is not us against them. We will only manage together. To be able to manage together, we need to listen to each other and recognize different environmental conditions that influence behaviors.

I would be delighted to get your comments on this one.