Einstein's Amygdala Part Four: "None of this is on the Front Page"

From our care-giving, nurturing, fear-projecting feelings - as kids have for baby rabbits.

To Rule-making - as regulators do, to make us feel like it won't happen again.

To Manipulating - Insiders using the rule-making to hobble competitors.

The people with money know how to rub our amygdalas, and we purr like cats. What we value could be the cat, could be the baby bunnies, might be the childrens' reaction to kitties and bunnies. What we need to do is realize how much is at risk in the looming great extinction.

As Twitter climate philosopher & cat-shoulder-perching specialist Ben See @ClimateBen puts it

Remember:

1. The oceans are being killed.

2. Forests will soon be gone.

3. Fertile soil is disappearing.

4. Megafauna risk extermination.

5. Insects are vanishing.

6. Climate chaos is inevitable.

7. Extinction is now.

8. Plastic is in our blood.

None of this is front page news.

Ben See's point is that what SHOULD BE front page news is NOT being covered on the front page.

What does make it to the front page is seldom-enough related to environmental protection. When we do get the attention of reader amygdalas, the story is often "gotcha'. Pollution regulation and enforcement is priotized to real estate value, and increasingly used to shore up stockholder value. (I re-read upon Keynes vs Friedman over the weekend, suffice to say both mens' concentric circles of caring gravitate towards living humans rather than those yet to be born)

In Einstein's Amygdala Part 3, the ways for-profit businesses manipulate Regulations to the detriment of competitors was portrayed as a way to massage the fear instincts which our brains have developed over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. As noted in Part 1, the list of things that might kill us was exponentially longer a mere 500 years ago, but our brains remain as hair-triggered as when we were running away from tigers, lions and bears.

Today in Part 4, I'm looking at how the finite potential we have to focus our attention is being squandered by the masturbating NGOs like Basel Action Network, those who produce ads and policies and laws and rules and outrage off of #POVERTYPORN and #POLLUTIONPORN that has ZERO association with the causes they attribute the Earth's real problems to. THIS IS A COMPLETE AND UTTER WASTE OF A FINITE AMOUNT OF ENVIRONMENTALISTS TIME AND ENERGY. AS MUCH AS I AM FOCUSED WITH ALL MY SOUL UPON MAKING THE PLANET LOVABLE FOR ALL OF OUR GRANDKIDS, I'M GUT PUNCHED BY THE CALLOUS, GREEDY WAY THAT SNAKE OIL SALESMEN ARE TRIGGERING OUR CARING AMYGDALAS WITH ZERO SCIENTIFIC BASIS OR EVEN SCANTEST OF EVIDENCE.

Once again, eye-candy poverty porn non-profit Basel Action Network has a press release this morning (but I'm putting that "below the fold")