“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
-Upton Sinclair
I guess it’s one thing for true believers; it doesn’t feel like a rationalization if you genuinely think that, despite all the havoc we’ve wreaked, the steps back from this or that brink we’ve been dragged kicking and screaming to recognize as necessary, and the damage we’ve done to our water and our air and our fellow earthling species, the 7 billion of us aren’t affecting the temperature, there’s nothing we can or should do about it, and that steps to keep this miraculous Goldilocks Planet just right for our grandchildren’s grandchildren are unnecessary and unaffordable.
I’ll be generous, and suggest that there are no true believers, that no one is dim-witted enough to think that we may proceed at will, profligate, heedless, and doomed.
havoc (n.) early 15c. from the expression cry havoc “give the signal to pillage.” Havok, the signal to soldiers to seize plunder, is from the Old French havot, and can likely be traced back to the Latin habere “to have, possess.”