Like most news junkies, I paid attention to the 14 votes for Speaker of the
House in the US. While this is the usual tempest in a tea pot news coverage, there is no escaping the fact that the Republicans elected a speaker who failed at
the first job of being a speaker, knowing when something will pass the house,
let alone your own caucus. I understand that profit, mostly gained through the
drugs of fame and power, is the motivating principle behind much of the
Republican squabble. And I agree that for the current Republican machine, you
should be seen as someone who can’t govern, who doesn’t believe in government and wants to burn down the government in the name of democracy.
That’s the brand
This messy stain on Reups resume ( soon to be forgotten by even worse behavior ), hinges on a right wing power politician who’s loved by the NRA and hedge funds, who will likely allow the house to vote on legislation designed to reform social security out of existence, and who endorsed Trump’s aborted coup, being considered not conservative enough. Compared to whom? Jair Bolsonaro?
This muddleheaded thinking seems like the natural outcome of a group of people who are content to discount scientific fact when it gets in the way of profits or politics. Right now a sizeable segment of Americans distrust science. I believe this lack of faith has everything to do with the right’s delusional rhetoric going back decades (and anti-vax idiots on all sides, but I digress). Right wing frothers have used any means to dissuade reasonable thought on things like tax policy, the racism at the core of US history, or on something as simple and accepted as the role we fossil-fuel-burning-idiots play in heating up the globe one MPH at a time. I’d like to add here that I know that corporations account for well over 50% of US greenhouse gas emissions according to the EPA.
We all need to play our part because it should be obvious that adding CO2
in vast amounts to the atmosphere will result in human devastation. Forget
saving the planet, the earth will barely notice. Even the catastrophic loss of
species will be forgotten as new lucky survivors branch out. Over eons that
shit recovers, and a whole new vibrant world emerges.
But we as an 8-billion-person species will be decimated by the effects of
climate change. The last time the atmosphere held 400 PPM CO2 seas
were about 30 feet higher than they are now. We’re at like 425ppm atmospheric
CO2 now and rising fast, fast, fast. Together we’re discounting
settled science, and ignoring the steady stream of research letting us know how
fucked we are.
It takes a belief in magic to ignore that winter has already ceased to exist
in much of the US. In the Northeast, we just have some mild cold snaps
separated by not quite winter drear. Ticks are very happy with this change in
weather.
Battling climate change requires our own changes and international cooperation. That means that, as a species, we will just continue to burn baby burn. Given that paradigm, current projections of a few feet of rise by
2100 are way too conservative.
The consequences will be nearly every seacoast city in the world underwater, the devastation of cropland leading to worldwide famine. Lack of food and living space will lead to very unwholesome shitstorms of violence. What happens to sea level when CO2 levels soar past 500 and 600 PPM in the very near future and something like 800 by 2100? I’m guessing seas rise 30-40 feet of sea level rise by 2100, but that might be too conservative.
At just fifteen feet Miami is long gone.
Expect that crisis in the 2040s. By the 2060s NYC will be at least a third smaller and shrinking fast. Philly, Baltimore, and Washington DC all underwater. Perhaps that’s the Repubs long term goal. They do shout about the dangers of government, and the need for smaller government, until a huge storm hits Louisiana.
If you have to be delusional about the climate crisis, than voting for a
speaker fourteen times and rich white guy fighting (please hold me back I might hurt my ego) are fine spectacles to host.
I expect Republican stupidity in the next term about the military, about abortion, about taxes, about keeping the government running and paying people who do the work of the people, and especially about the war in Ukraine. But could it be too much to ask for some sound, scientifically-based thinking on the true over-riding topic of our time?