October 13, 2018: The Last Revolutionary, Smoke Alarm, His Sorry Role

“Mother nature is the last revolutionary, and mother nature is ruthless”.

                           ---from “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

This week the editors of The New York Times wrote an opinion (1) based upon a report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The opinion is a siren call to those in power to pay attention.

The panel “Says the world must utterly transform its energy systems in the next decade or risk ecological and social disaster,” concluded The Times, underscoring the gravity of the report. (2)

Ninety one scientists from over 40 countries were convened at the request of several island countries—all signatories of the Paris Accords—who are rightly concerned about the consequences of rising sea levels due to global warming.

“Fearing that their countries might someday be lost to rising seas, they asked the intergovernmental panel for further study of a lower threshold of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit”, as opposed to 3.6 degrees below preindustrial levels. “The panel's report concluded that the stricter threshold should become the new target. The alternative is catastrophe—mass die-offs of coral reefs, widespread drought, famine and wildfires, and potentially conflict over land, food and fresh water.” (3)

We've got, according to the best evidence, about a decade to get our 'house' in order and, “there is no such thing as a gentle glide path”. The world must go to public transportation, fuel efficient cars and trucks, even diets must change since cows with their constant flatulence contribute 14.5 per cent of the greenhouse gasses in the form of methane. Renewable energy must increase from around 20 per cent today to two-thirds of the world's energy supply and the “use of coal would need to be phased out, vanishing almost entirely by midcentury”(4)

“This will take enormous public and private investment and technological progress, even a breakthrough or two.” (5). In short, it will require political will.

Therein lies the rub. Governments are, by their very nature, reactive rather than pro-active, if not reactionary. It stands to reason, for they have much invested in the status quo. But the status quo, it is becoming increasingly obvious, will not hold; for the status quo threatens to bring about the end of civilization as we know it. If you think migration and war over oil is bad, imagine war over food and water.

But in the United States, long before the emergence of this buffoon we have as Chief Magistrate, a movement has arisen that has made denial it's political mantra. Beginning with the idiot senator Inhofe of Oklahoma who first stood on the Senate floor and denounced climate change as a 'hoax', more and more the Rescumlickan Party has gravitated to the level of environmental No-Nothingism. Deep from the bowels of the evangelical madness that has always lurked just below the surface, a derangement that welcomes—at some fundamental level—the end of the earth, came the Teabaggers who have catapulted into congress men and women with whom one cannot reason when it comes to climate change. But the time Caesar Disgustus was imposed upon us there was already in place an unholy combination of Koch-funded stink-tanks, a cabal of willfully ignorant politicians calling itself the 'freedom caucus', and a billionaire-funded 'astro-turf'(6). Movement posturing as modern-day patriots. Before our Disgustus there were Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich; political arsonists with the social intelligence of room temperature. Indeed, one can cite Ronald Reagan removing the solar panels from the White House roof put there by his predecessor Jimmy Carter. Rescumlickans don't know how to build, only how to dismantle.

“Unfortunately, no alarm seems loud enough to penetrate the walls of the White House or the cranium of its principle occupant...(H)aving already announced that he would withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change, having also rolled back a suite of Obama-era efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Mr. Trump thus reaffirmed his sorry role as an outlier in the global struggle against climate change—a struggle very few believe can be won without the enthusiastic participation of the United States”. (7)

And therein lies the rub. We have a major political party in this country, ostensibly representing half the country, lending political—if not intellectual—legitimacy to its policy positions that has made ignorance and greed its mantra. It is willful, belligerent ignorance, and unabashed, naked greed. This is why Noam Chomsky has labeled the Republican Party the greatest threat facing humanity.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison

__________________

1. The Editors. “A Deafening, Piercing Smoke Alarm” The New York Times. Wednesday, October 10, 2018: Page A18
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. “Astro-Turf” means a false or plastic 'grass-roots' or 'bottom-up' movement. False because it is a billionaire organized and funded political movement designed to appear to be the spontaneous outrage of the 'people'. The first known appearance of such a strategy was the so-called Brooks Brothers Riots during the recount of the Florida election returns in 2000 when Rescumlickan congressional staffers came down from D.C. And, posing as Florida residents, packed the County Clerks offices and closed down the recount. The idea then took root a decade later on a national scale when the Billionaires funded buses and organized the 'Teabagger' revolt against Obama falsely claiming he had raised taxes only days after he was inaugurated.
7. . Op. Cit.