Scientists knew about fossil fuels, CO2, and the potential for global warming a hundred years ago, and petroleum industry scientists accurately predicted today's temperature based on CO2 models in the 1982. We were taught about the greenhouse effect and global warming in elementary school in the early '80s. I read a small article in the back of Discover magazine in the late mid '80s that described what we call climate change today--what I would call "climate instability," which, like a thunderstorm, is the violent volatility that occurs as a system changes from one equilibrium to another. In 1979, amid the Arab oil embargo, Carter put a solar water heater in the roof of the White House, declaring that they represent an alternative that could lead us in a new direction--toward independence from foreign oil and (ambiguously) toward a new industrial adventure. In 1980, he put forth the Carter Doctrine, declaring that the US would assert itself in the Middle East, using the military if necessary, to secure US national interests, i.e. oil. While Carter can alone represent this decision point, we've watched it play out in alternating administrations change directions all the while sea levels have risen, temperatures have climbed, acidification of the oceans have threatened sea life. Fish and bird migrations have changed. Drought, widfires, and flooding have become worse and more frequent. I've been waiting anxiously for thirty years for politicians to do something substantial, to acknowledge this is a real problem that requires a concrete legal and policy response. How many wars has there been? How many alliances with brutal dictators? All for a path that no sane person, no moral person could choose?
As we face the global climate crisis, we must acknowledge what has brought us to this point--unbridled capitalism. The climate deniers and politicians who have stood in the way have done so for the almighty dollar. In the same manner that they caused and reaped the rewards of the housing crisis, of the opioid crisis, all the banking crises--all these things they have foisted on The People for their own profit--they have given us this climate crisis to line their own pocketbooks while placing upon us the ultimate costs. There are those who will say "there is a market-based solution." Well, I say we disembowel them in the Reagan Presidential Library and pour their blood on Ayn Rand's grave. Obama offered them a market based solution--less socialist that Reagan's embrace of Keynesian economics--and the capitalist puppet masters turned him down.
The world is fed up. The Ganges and Brahmaputra River valleys, part of the most densely populated region on Earth have faced repeated catastrophic monsoon floods. Oceania faces migration as a final resort just as racist nationalism and antiimmigration sentiment reach levels not seen in a hundred years, when the human population was 1/4 of what it is today. Houston and New Orleans, built on foundations of oil, are drowning in the flood waters they have brought upon themselves.
We need a total restructuring of society around the needs of Humanity and what remains of the 20th Century biosphere. Capitalism, the Billionaires, the plutocrats and oligarchs all need to take a back seat. They've had their chance. In the last year, a young lady, Greta Thunberg, beginning with a solo act of civil disobedience to protest and bring attention to our politicians' and leaders' failures and inadequacies and culminating in a million children and activists in cities around the world and on every continent marching to demand an appropriate response from society, she has rattles the halls of government and brought the next generation to their feet. Know that as we continue to spew CO2 from our tailpipes and our power plants, it is our ambivalence and apathy her generation is battling against--literally for their very survival but also for our own. It is our ambivalence and apathy. It is our ambivalence and apathy. IT IS OUR AMBIVALENCE AND APATHY that are the the problem.
Yes; your government is near useless and unresponsive. Yes; the problem is dire, nearly insurmountable, and possibly hopeless. And, the people you must fight are swimming in an ocean of money and power. They pull the strings of government like master marionettists. But, they bleed, and we CAN take the government back. With your lives and your children's lives at stake will you try, or will you sit back complacent and careless in your comfortable life and look out for yourself alone while the world your children hope to live in burns? Yield to the science deniers and skeptics, while the islands of Oceania drown, while the arctic and antarctic melt, while species go extinct daily?
Or, will you stand with this young lady and fight for a future for our kids? Write your Representatives and let them know your vote depends on their support for her cause? Let your Representatives know your vote depends on them turning their back on the capitalists who have bought their votes with campaign dollars? Let your Representatives know your vote depends on them taxing billionaires out of existence so they can no longer buy our government? Enforcing antitrust law and breaking-up the tech monopolies that have all of your personal information, profit off of it, and sell it to be used against you for political purposes? Let them know your vote depends on them working to build a world worth living in? Or, will you simply vote for someone who's not a self serving demagogue?
As we face the global climate crisis, we must acknowledge what has brought us to this point--unbridled capitalism. The climate deniers and politicians who have stood in the way have done so for the almighty dollar. In the same manner that they caused and reaped the rewards of the housing crisis, of the opioid crisis, all the banking crises--all these things they have foisted on The People for their own profit--they have given us this climate crisis to line their own pocketbooks while placing upon us the ultimate costs. There are those who will say "there is a market-based solution." Well, I say we disembowel them in the Reagan Presidential Library and pour their blood on Ayn Rand's grave. Obama offered them a market based solution--less socialist that Reagan's embrace of Keynesian economics--and the capitalist puppet masters turned him down.
The world is fed up. The Ganges and Brahmaputra River valleys, part of the most densely populated region on Earth have faced repeated catastrophic monsoon floods. Oceania faces migration as a final resort just as racist nationalism and antiimmigration sentiment reach levels not seen in a hundred years, when the human population was 1/4 of what it is today. Houston and New Orleans, built on foundations of oil, are drowning in the flood waters they have brought upon themselves.
We need a total restructuring of society around the needs of Humanity and what remains of the 20th Century biosphere. Capitalism, the Billionaires, the plutocrats and oligarchs all need to take a back seat. They've had their chance. In the last year, a young lady, Greta Thunberg, beginning with a solo act of civil disobedience to protest and bring attention to our politicians' and leaders' failures and inadequacies and culminating in a million children and activists in cities around the world and on every continent marching to demand an appropriate response from society, she has rattles the halls of government and brought the next generation to their feet. Know that as we continue to spew CO2 from our tailpipes and our power plants, it is our ambivalence and apathy her generation is battling against--literally for their very survival but also for our own. It is our ambivalence and apathy. It is our ambivalence and apathy. IT IS OUR AMBIVALENCE AND APATHY that are the the problem.
Yes; your government is near useless and unresponsive. Yes; the problem is dire, nearly insurmountable, and possibly hopeless. And, the people you must fight are swimming in an ocean of money and power. They pull the strings of government like master marionettists. But, they bleed, and we CAN take the government back. With your lives and your children's lives at stake will you try, or will you sit back complacent and careless in your comfortable life and look out for yourself alone while the world your children hope to live in burns? Yield to the science deniers and skeptics, while the islands of Oceania drown, while the arctic and antarctic melt, while species go extinct daily?
Or, will you stand with this young lady and fight for a future for our kids? Write your Representatives and let them know your vote depends on their support for her cause? Let your Representatives know your vote depends on them turning their back on the capitalists who have bought their votes with campaign dollars? Let your Representatives know your vote depends on them taxing billionaires out of existence so they can no longer buy our government? Enforcing antitrust law and breaking-up the tech monopolies that have all of your personal information, profit off of it, and sell it to be used against you for political purposes? Let them know your vote depends on them working to build a world worth living in? Or, will you simply vote for someone who's not a self serving demagogue?
Nah. Didn't think so. Gave up on you a long time ago, to be honest.
