To the Global Warming Doubters ...

Trump Unveils Plan to Accelerate Destruction of the Planet - Crowd Goes Wild!

The inevitable has officially come to pass. An obnoxious, sexist, jingoistic, racist, isolationist, atavistic, anti-everyone-but-white-male-Christian buffoon will now be the Republican nomination for president. In case you’ve been living under a rock or in the Looking Glass, that progenitor of a bygone age that never really existed is Donald Trump. The Trumpinator, as I have decided to label him henceforth, has announced his plans to continue the rapid destruction of our ecosystem in a speech that one observer, Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club environmentalist group, noted included, “more contradiction in one hour than I heard in the speech.” One of the ways this destruction will occur, of course, includes him blowing so much hot air into the ozone layer that it cannot help but collapse in on itself. However, the oil and gas industry talking point speech also included the following gems (courtesy of The Guardian):

• Cancelling the Paris climate agreement
• Endorsing drilling off the Atlantic Coast
• Allow the Keystone XL Pipe to be built, with the profit somehow coming to the “American People,” though one does wonder how many of the people this includes
• Promised to only work with “environmentalists whose only agenda is protecting nature” and to “focus on real environmental challenges, not the phony ones.” (aka “Global Warming”)
• Attacking renewable energy sources like solar (“too expensive”) and wind turbines (“kills eagles”)

During the muddled speech, Trump also claimed the government “should not pick winners and losers” and finished with the salvo: ““I will give you everything … I am the only one who will deliver.” Of course, as with most of his policy speeches, this one was incredibly short on actual policy initiatives or details. That appeared to matter little to a crowd who screamed “build the wall” early in the speech.

Mother nature was heard to sigh a long, smoky exhale before contemplating whether she might pack up and look for a more suitable planet if the Casino and Reality TV magnate actually won the highest office in the land.

Pope vs. the GOP

The True Costs of our Continued Oil Addiction

When we speak of our addiction to oil, the costs are usually measured in terms of our engagement in the Middle East and climate change. The continuing problems in Syria, Iraq, Iran and Israel are the most acute examples of the ongoing costs of our fealty to OPEC while, just today, another study emerged showing that the tropical atmosphere is warming 80 percent faster than the Earth’s surface (The Guardian), providing further fodder for the oil company sponsored climate change deniers to try to manipulate into a liberal conspiracy. But a more startling cost has just emerged, thanks to the one of the key engines of neoliberal ideology, the International Monetary Fund.

What the IMF found is that fossil fuel companies are benefitting from global subsidies to the tune of $5.3 trillion a year (or almost $10 million a day). In composite, the total is greater than the total health spending of all governments in the world. The vast sum is largely predicated on polluters not paying the costs imposed on governments by the burning of coal, oil and gas, including health related problem cause by air pollution and the floods, droughts and storms being driven by climate change. It is a startling number that puts a more acute focus on the real costs of environmental degradation and our unwillingness to curb carbon emissions.

It also points to the real costs of not pursuing renewable energy sources. If governments took a fraction of that cost and used it to invest in green companies, we could start to address global warming, weaken the political impact of the Middle East and actually live in a world that is less polluted and prone to ecological disaster. On top of that, those diverted government funds could then be used to address pressing issues like health, hunger, poverty and the diminishing quality of life for far too many global citizens. Of course that would mean the diminishing of profits for big oil and gas companies, who are not surprisingly at the UN Climate Change talks this week, arguing their case to continue destroying the planet one drilling site, factory and car at a time (RTCC).

Happy Earth Day!

CA Water Crisis Accelerates

Some Questions for the Climate Change Deniers

The tired debate on climate change continues on unabated by the ever growing body of evidence debunking it. The latest example? A recent study highlighted by Fox News and then Joanne Nova that climate change deniers are more likely to know the answer to a nine-question quiz on climatology, created by a Yale professor and answered by a sample of 2,000 respondents. But here are the questions global warming conspiracy theorists never seem to answer:

1. Why would all these Nobel Prize winning scientists lie?
2. Who benefits from this “conspiracy?”
3. How do you explain the rather obvious changes in the climate, including the fact the temperatures are rising dramatically in the Arctic?
4. Who benefits from continuing to argue about this “conspiracy?”
5. Who benefits if we continue to do nothing about climate change?
6. Who funds most of the research on this “conspiracy?”
7. Why hasn’t the mainstream media found any evidence of this conspiracy after all these years?

The only question I’ve seen answered with any level of scrutiny is #2, with the absurd claims about Wall Street organizing this whole thing for future carbon trading profits. While they did orchestrate one of the biggest scams in history, almost eliciting the collapse of the global economy in the process, while garnering record profits and bonuses, it was really their incompetence that was rewarded. How are they supposed to have convinced so many climatologists to go along with this epic scam, backed by pretty compelling scientific evidence. Last and maybe most importantly:

8. Even if this is all a scam, aren’t there other benefits to lowering our addiction to carbon-based fuels, that clearly pollute the air and cause all sorts of problem for human health (that are beyond question) and global geopolitics?

In Case There Was Any Confusion … GOP Still Hates Science

A couple of weeks ago, Senators Rand Paul and Lamar Smith wanted to clarify the Republican position on global warming with a Politico piece entitled “No, the GOP is Not at War with Science.” After an auspicious beginning where the Senators wrote about debt and taxpayer relief (code words for further cuts to government spending and tax cuts for the wealthy), they go on to explain that science is really important to our future but that it is important to check what our taxpayer dollars are being used for. Among their concerns are NSF dollars that went to a climate-change themed musical, investigation of Tea Party activities on social media and a study of bicycle designs. Now all three might sound a bit absurd on the surface, but lets consider them again: 1. We do arguably need to make people aware of the hazards and perils associated with continuing to do nothing about climate change, 2. Research on how politics works in cyberspace is important in the field of political science, and 3. Increased bicycle use is a powerful way to not only help the environment but improve the health of those engaged in that activity. A better designed bicycle makes it easier for those who are out of shape/overweight to ride them over a greater distance.

They then list a series of other somewhat obscure research to claim that federal dollars should only go to research that could reap clear benefits to technological and economic growth. On the surface this argument also sounds reasonable, but it ignores the fact that science moves forward slowly and incrementally and that some of that esoteric research actually has a huge influence in other areas. If we only focused on research that had instrumental ends, we would miss out on so much more that is useful. In fact, the call for only funding research that has potentially positive economic outcomes, implies an agenda where the economic needs trump all others and democracy becomes an increasingly bygone promise realized only in the fantasy world of rigged campaigns. They claim that the scientific community should be accountable to Congress (now that it is run by the GOP) and that: “The academic community forgets that federal science funding should be in the national interest.” That is true on the surface, but politicizing academic research borders on the edges of censorship and allows people who know nothing about science to spread their pseudoscience to the masses without anyone to check the validity, truth and accuracy of those fictitious claims. The corporate-sponsored GOP thus appears to wants to decide what is wasteful and what isn’t concluding that article with this rather haunting argument, “In the new Congress, Republicans, the party of limited government, should propose legislation to eliminate the funding of wasteful projects—and focus on smart investments instead.”

And thus we return to the question of global warming and the new GOP-majority Senate. So what happened a couple of days ago? That Senate, which is still debating the Keystone Pipeline project, decided to attach a few amendments that could clarify their position on climate change. They held a first vote where the measure simply asked them to vote on whether the climate is, in fact, changing. That one actually passed 98 to 1, with only Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi holding out (though he wouldn't explain why). The folks at Fox “News” must have been apoplectic. A second vote probably calmed them down though, as 50 voted against ending a GOP filibuster on the following statement: “human activity significantly contributes to climate change.” This is a fact even the oil-loving Bush gang acknowledged a couple of years before leaving office. A third vote look the word “significantly” out of the climate change statement above, but another GOP filibuster killed that as well. And so just as grains of sand through the hourglass, so is the insanity of our lives.

NPR Doesn’t Care About the Environment Either

The right has been trying to defund NPR and PBS for years, arguing the government should not be supporting their “partisan” perspectives. And while they continue to receive a little federal funding, the declining percentage has meant increased fealty to their corporate sponsors. Starting in the early 2000s, it was clear that NPR was starting to move toward the middle, with more stories reported from a conservative perspective, more conservative voices and less leftist presence on the airwaves. That has only worsened over time, at least to an old leftist like me, and now they have made their latest parry in the struggle to undermine any progressive voice in American mainstream media, cutting their staff to a single part-time reporter on climate change (from three full-time reporters and an editor). Not surprisingly, we are already seeing a decline in that coverage this year and it should only get worse going forward.

The good news is that most news on climate change is bad news, and we can thus save ourselves from the increasingly depressing reality that we have all but killed the planet. Better to ignore the crisis and instead focus on the lives of the rich and famous, our favorite sports team and the continued inability of our politicians to do much beyond calling each other names.

Good Day for Progressives: No to Pipeline (and Rape)

It was a bad day for the oil industry, and probably the fading reelection hopes of Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA), but a good day for environmentalists, and by extension, the environment, as the Keystone XL Pipeline was again rejected by the Senate – though this time by a single vote (NYT). While this is a victory for those who believe we should probably try to save our dying planet before it is too late, coming on the back of the historic agreement Obama signed with China last week to reduce carbon emissions, it might be short lived, as the handover of power to the GOP in January might be the final blow to the environmental groups who have spent millions fighting the bill for seven long years now (against a much better financed oil industry). On the other hand, a newly-resilient President Obama could well use his veto when the bill eventually ends up on his desk. But it is good news for progressive … a rarity of late.

The relation to the bigger narrative of America is hard to ignore. Republicans promised to come back to the issue right after the new year begins, allegedly because it will provide jobs, but clearly to serve their corporate patrons. Is this really what the American people just voted in? Let’s destroy the environment some more! That’s what they want? I think it shows how degraded our political process has become, particularly among the many democrats, and I’ve noticed political pundits on TV, who claim this is one of the issues Obama should be flexible on. The inability of the press to put the current political climate into a historical and contemporary context is maybe the most disturbing element of this latest election. Missing from their analysis, with a very few exceptions, are the two biggest stories: 1) Money playing a huge role in this election, together with a suppression of the poor and minority vote, facilitated by the two Bush appointees to the Supreme Court, and 2) The policy of obstructionism when not in power and “mandate-politics” whenever they have it that has ruled the party since the start of the Clinton Presidency over two decades ago. The GOP clearly does not have the interests of the public in mind with the policies they appear poised to pursue, but too many of the public continue to believe just the opposite no matter what the facts tell them, doggonit!

In a completely unrelated story, NBC has cancelled the new pilot that was to star Bill Cosby, after allegations about repeated rapes in the past began to percolate with increasing force in the press (NYT). Ironically, it was only a few weeks ago that The New Yorker ran a relative hagiography on the aging comic, who is beloved across racial and generational lines, though his popularity certainly took a hit among some after his rant at the 2004 NAACP Brown v. Board of Education anniversary dinner (Clip of the Infamous Pound Cake speech). It is possible that Cosby is the victim of a smear campaign, but that seems rather unlikely, particularly given the number of women involved. It is certainly a tragedy to many, including me, to think that this beloved comic genius who has graced the airwaves on and off for several decades – from the 80s forward with the avuncular charm that seems to channel our collective dreams of a better, more innocent and less racially divisive America – but appears to demonstrate the national dialogue on violence against women is not over, and that we might start to take on this ubiquitous and tragic problem more seriously in the future.

Wal*Mart Heirs Hate the Environment Too!

Last week I wrote about Wal*Mart’s often horrific labor relations policies, most recently undermining their part-time workers by taking away promised healthcare coverage. But one of the worst corporations in the world was back in the news a day later, this time for pushing to block solar energy expansion (ILSR). Despite claims they are sustainability champions, Wal*Mart actually contributes to pollution at the levels of Oil & Gas companies and rank 33rd on the Greenhouse Polluters Index (Daily Kos). And they apparently are not big fans of solar energy either – contributing $4.5 million to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Americans for Prosperity, two groups trying to weaken clean energy policies at the state level, and owning a solar company, First Solar, that ironically worked to undermine household rooftop solar by advocating (along with the utilities) for a tax on those homes; cutting residential installations by 40 percent. Shopping at Wal*Mart is becoming almost as bad as buying a Justin Bieber album. Well, almost …

Atlas Shrugged, But What About the Rest of Us ...

Weather Forecast

It’s hot! Where? Just about anywhere. According to the two most reliable barometers of global temperatures, we just went through the warmest quarter in history (since we starting keeping temperature records in the 1880s). This may be good news for those hoping to swim in Alaska in 50 years or those whose inland housing might become beachfront around the same time, but not such good news for the rest of us. The Japanese Meteorological Agency claims June was the warmest June globally since 1891, following April and May being the highest temperatures ever recorded. A NASA report confirmed these findings, with only very incremental differences at the .000 level. And while global warming doubters will find a way to diminish the results, it is hard to argue that the arctic sea ice level is trending toward record lows, abnormally warm ocean temperatures spawned the earliest hurricane ever to make landfall in North Carolina and heat waves are on the rise across the globe. And finally, in April, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels reached a monthly average of 400 parts per million for the first time in 800,000 years. I’m not sure what they actually means, per se, but it sounds exciting! I suppose Alfred E. Neuman provides the best advice under the circumstances … what me worry?