Question One Narrative, Question Them All

 I grew up with little food and without electricity near a national park in Southeast Asia after a devastating war. From time to time, the men in my village hunted wild animals like hogs, deer, and porcupines to get some meat for the children. The forests quickly became thinner as the local population grew fast. I had a typical third-world childhood. The first time electricity, although intermittent and expensive, came was in 1987, allowing us to enjoy the FIFA World Cup, store food in fridges, read books in the evenings and sleep under a fan. Some gold was found, shaking up the whole quiet town with its usual environmental and social problems for a while. A third of my female friends married quickly before finishing high school.

Life gave me an opportunity to pursue university education abroad. When I arrived in the West, I eagerly embraced what I thought was free and independent media that constantly stuffed people with climate change problems and the doom of earth and humanity. Little did I know about scientific debates around the subject. I chose to study international public law and environmental law at a well-known European center. I love justice as much as forests and trees, and I even became an amateur mushroom hunter in temperate climates.

It took me a long time to question the official climate narrative. After graduation, I was busy with successive jobs outside the environmental law field and founding a young family. That experience in international forums and private philanthropy later helped me understand how international conventions and consensuses were influenced and reached....<<<Read More>>>...