Fear is powerful. We saw morgues overflowing with bodies. Our doctors were dying. We knew friends and relatives who had the disease. COVID-19 was coming for us! So we shut the economy down and sheltered in place.
Fear does not work as well against the climate crisis. Many of us know how scary climate change is. Books like Falter by Bill McKibben and Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells are very frightening. But even for those who have read them, it’s not like COVID-19. Why does fear not work for us here? Major corporations have spent billions of dollars to convince us climate change is still disputed by scientists, the dangers are well in our future, and if they are all true, our ingenuity will fix everything before it can hurt us. Most people are pretty certain these are lies. But we believe them anyway in our hearts, even those of us who are certain they are lies. We want to believe them.
Climate-crisis fear may not be as strong as coronavirus fear, but it is still powerful, even with major industries fighting against it. Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (the FUD Factor) is a tool of persuasion. Republicans have used it against Democrats for years. We have all heard, “Democrats are coming for our guns,” “Democrats will raise our taxes,” and “Democrats will let rapists and murderers into our country, and those who do not rape and murder, will take our jobs.”
Michelle Obama says, “When they go low, we go high.” But the climate disaster is coming, and may destroy civilization and perhaps even kill all life on Earth. We must do everything possible to mitigate the disaster. I intend to use the FUD Factor to help save us. I recommend others use it as well.
Four more years having a climate denier as President of the United States will make it much harder to mitigate the climate crisis. I am posting images on Twitter in which I present Trump as the devil. He is pointing at you. He may burn down your house. He may flood out your home. He may harm your grandchildren. And he may enable your loved ones to kill themselves. But you can do something to stop him. You can vote against him.
Here are small versions of the Twitter images I am posting. I have only 1,350 Twitter followers. These images probably will not make a difference, but we all need to do whatever we can.
Full-size versions of these images also appear on the next four postings on this blog.
Who am I? Why am I doing this? I am a novelist, writing a powerful global warming novel as part of my personal war against the climate crisis. I need a great publishing company to market the novel and print a lot of copies. Publishers look at an author's social media numbers as a sign of potential buyers. Please help. Friend me on Facebook, Follow me on Twitter, and connect with me on LinkedIn. Also, please share and comment on what I post. Consider it as doing a small part in saving humanity from the ravages of global warming. Thanks.
