This past Sunday, I listened to some of the WCBS broadcast of the interview with president-elect Donald Trump, conducted by Lesley Stahl, of 60 Minutes.
According to my fact-checking, Stahl indeed did not ask a single question related to any environmental issue, including the issue many regard as the issue of our time: climate change. (Incidentally, I don’t regard climate change as the issue of our time, I regard the whole totality of all the key environmental issues that we are not addressing, as the issue of our time.) Stahl also left untouched the fact that Trump chose Myron Ebell, to lead the incoming administration’s EPA transition team. Doesn’t this help prove my point that eco-consciousness is virtually nowhere on our radar?
Anyway, I have an idea for President Obama. I don’t expect Obama to jump on this. But it does illustrate (if in a small way), what I mean when I say we have to think big and think outside the present paradigm, in order to really shake things up and plant the seeds for the necessary change that needs to take root if mankind is to survive and have a prosperous future. If Obama is really serious about conveying the importance of issues such as climate change, then why not do this: Every day, till his final day of occupying the Oval Office, President Obama could hold a press conference, bringing together a wide range of scientific experts and Nobel Prize recipients, to speak and take questions, and educate the public, on a wide range of ecological issues (not just climate change). That would then become a matter of public record, for all time, and, if done right, this lasting legacy could also serve to help build and shore up strong opposition to the types of things an incoming Trump administration might ultimately try to accomplish.