It ain’t about saving the planet from climate catastrophe. It’s all about control. Dictatorial control.

True personal story setup first, then I’ll end with where we are today with the climate litigation lawfare efforts. 

Ask any political conservative out there what’s the one single word that best describes the mindset of the zealot political Left, and the word you’ll most often is “control.” It’s never even crossed my mind to behave that way. It’s just not the way I think. I first learned about their mindset back in one of my 1980s college business psychology classes, and at the time, the lesson had precisely zero to do with any aspect of politics. The professor didn’t even tell us what the goal of the lesson was or wrap it up with an explanation of what happened.

First, we were given a set of questions to answer, which determined what personality type best suited us. I swiped the slide below from someone’s generic “organizational behavior” Powerpoint presentation, it’s the standard four labels for the way people think based on Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s ideas about analytical psychology. If any of the origins for the personality type labels was told to us, I sure don’t remember it.

In a nutshell, and in perhaps too generalized of summary, the “sensation thinker” personality type is what the fictional science officer Mr Spock was in the Star Trek TV / movie series. Pure logic, no emotion. The counter-opposite is the “intuitive feeler”, essentially Dr ‘Bones’ McCoy in that series, emotion-driven and prone to rash judgements. The other two quadrants were personality types of a more subtle kind, having aspects of the two more extreme types. From the test results, the class was divided up into the four groups. I ended up in the Mr Spock group, albeit with a streak of “feeler artistry” in my blood.

Each group was given all the characteristics of our opposite personality type and what their preferences were for comfort, regarding levels of independent judgement contrasted with intensity levels of supervisor instruction, and our assignment was to use what we learned about them to design a job position with a set of work conditions in which they would be completely happy to be in. Our group didn’t much care for the work conditions that our opposites preferred, but we empathized and did our best to design a work environment / job responsibilities they’d love.

At the end of those design sessions, they were exchanged with the opposite groups, and the leaders of each group type read the designs aloud and offered their assessments of how well done the designs were, with input from members of their group. I remember very little of how well the “sensation feeler” vs “intuitive thinker” results were; both groups had no dispute with what was designed for them.

I do remember how the “intuitive feelers” reacted to our design for them. Apart from us making a couple of incorrect guesses about small details, they thought we did quite well creating the ideal work environment for them. Our group was then even better informed on what they preferred.

I distinctly remember our reaction to the work environment the “intuitive feelers” designed for us.

We were aghast, left initially speechless, and struggled to find a polite way to respond.

The “intuitive feelers” hadn’t done one thing to cater to our preferences, their design for our ‘preferred work environment’ was hardly different at all than what we had designed for them. We were to work in a job their way … or the highway. With some kind of implied threat to our job security if we dared to operate outside of its boundaries.

I didn’t even think to apply political ideology to that exercise, but when anyone stops to examine any part of the political Left agenda, particularly over the last decade, there it is – you will conform to their narratives about the 2020 general election results / ‘undocumented Americans’ / Covid mask mandates / ‘transgender science’ / ‘reproductive justice’ / ‘saving democracy by censoring disinformation’ and do so without question ……. or else! Including agreeing with their narratives about stopping climate change. Obey.

Stop and consider how that side is now handling the climate issue. Not through dry, mild-mannered, highly persuasive bulletproof science presentations where there is no doubt that we face a climate crisis, thus convincing everyone to take critical thinking measures meeting the approval of Science Officer Spock. Compliance to climate mitigation will be enforced through court action. The fossil fuel industry will be sued into complete capitulation, and the “intuitive feelers” will control what energy sources the public has access to.

See the problem there?