OK, yeah, I failed middle school Earth Science, but honestly, I don’t need to know the difference between igneous and metamorphic rocks to be sure climate change isn’t real, though my D in statistics may be somewhat related to my inability to read a line graph showing average global temperatures increasing exponentially since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, and sure, 97% of all scientists agree climate change is real, but 100% of my drinking buddies disagree, and the 20 minutes I spent conducting my own academic peer reviewed meta-analysis on WhatsApp and YouTube is just as good as any “professional” report because I know that some dude ranting at his phone in a 2009 F-150 is more than qualified to refute the so-called Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s “scientists,” and “experts,” and “evidence” with passion, and spittle, and beard oil because the hundreds of organizations and thousands of PhDs who’ve spent their entire lives investigating climate change are all participants in a grand conspiracy underwritten by the hyper-rich environmentalist lobby, never mind the half a dozen climate-denying scientists funded by oil companies, because I, unlike the socialists running Ford, Walmart, and Coca-Cola, am a rock-ribbed conservative who’s reflexively allergic to any drastic, sudden changes to my government, economy, society, or environment… wait, scratch that last one… but anyway, I haven’t seen a single change in my daily life except for more frequent and powerful hurricanes, sunny day flooding, disappearing coastlines, larger wildfires, fresh water wars, and, now that I think about it, February is a lot warmer than it used to be—hey, behind you, a starving polar bear!—but there’s no way developers would build on land they knew was vulnerable to flooding, except that they almost immediately sell their assets to mitigate short-term risk, thereby leaving someone else holding that bag, but regardless, banks have tons of money and smart people, so they wouldn’t keep financing those projects and knowingly exacerbate systemic market risk—OH DEAR GOD!—sorry, I just saw the ghosts of Lehman Bros, Merrill Lynch, AIG, and Bear Stearns, man that was scary, but getting back on track, why would insurers continue underwriting all that risky property, except that the national flood insurance market is completely distorted by government subsidies, which would make it damn near impossible to buy private insurance in floodplains in Florida, Texas, Louisiana, and other Republican states if they disappeared, but deep down, the overwhelming evidence that climate change is an undeniable fact that already affects me directly and existentially jeopardizes the modicum of stability I’ve labored my entire life to cobble together is why I retreat behind vacuous talking points produced by fossil fuel company public relations departments, and maybe, just maybe, climate activists would be better served by empathizing with my completely understandable, though short-sighted, coping mechanism rather than writing 500-word run-on screeds insulting my intelligence and ridiculing my fear.

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Andrew Otazo

'Miami Creation Myth' author Andrew Otazo has advised officials on Cuba policy, worked for the Mexican president, fired a tank, and ran with 30lbs of trash.

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