THE COST OF DENIAL

Image from the (bad) film "Waterworld".

Peter and I have been thinking about moving to a smaller town north of Boston. We were recently astounded to find a main street of friendly people with good manners in that area. We have been starved of those amenities here in the new Boston of universities, finance and technology-based capitalism, where a third of the population is under 35.

Frankly, Boston has become too crowded. Animals crowded into too small a space become defensive or aggressive. And, despite the denials of the anthropocentric, we are animals.

A recent inquiry into a condominium we liked led me to FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) flood maps. Luckily, I found out that the condo building is smack in the middle of a newly ordained flood plain. This fact had not been mentioned by the selling agent, of course. Perhaps she did not know.  Perhaps.

This is an excellent illustration of the potential personal cost of climate-change denial. In this case, two unsuspecting buyers plop down their lives' savings to live in a charming seaport location in a sturdy brick building. Inevitably, the tides rise, more quickly than politicians and corporate media had foretold. The building costs considerably more to occupy. Flood damage. Mold remediation. Flood insurance premiums. Eventually, it may fall to subsidence within the buyers' lifetimes. Building condemned. Worthless condo. All savings gone. Elderly buyers homeless.

I scratch my head at the two great cults of America: Reproduction and automobiles. I belong to neither. So, I am not infected by the denial which dependency on either cult for a sense of worth instills in its followers. I am amused when complete strangers inquire whether or not I have impregnated a woman. I am amused when someone gives me the fish eye as I emerge from my 17-year-old subcompact. Truly amused.

The human species has one foot on a banana peel. I suppose I am more liable to get it, since I lived through the nuclear threat of the 1960's. Those bloated morons in uniforms were just chafing at the bit to blow us all to smithereens ... on both sides. It is easy to laugh at the fat moron in North Korea today, if you hadn't lived in a world run by morons just like him, as I had in my early years. I was delighted to see a reminder of that world in the recent wrap-up of the brilliant HBO show, "The Leftovers".

The cost of denial will come first to the self-obsessed deniers. The smiling, politically correct and self-righteous minions of Facebook (or their offspring) may well cling to a key drive holding the digital record of their child's first dump in a toilet as Titanic Earth sinks. They may run for their turbo-powered vehicles to escape. But those pixels won't float, and that car won't run on denial.