It’s a Plutocratic Thing
Checking in on whether we know what we're thinking | Issue 9, March 2, 2019
Earth’s long-term welfare is at the mercy of the wealthiest special interest that has ever existed, says climate scientist Michael Mann. Photo by David Imbrogno | cowgarage.com
ONE | What were they not thinking?! TWO | The ‘Villainous Act’ of the Fossil Fuel Plutocrat. THREE | Now, a word from a polar bear. FOUR | The Kids Are Right. FIVE | Tweet of the Week
ONE | What were they not thinking?!
If one needed any more hard proof the current U.S. administration is a clear and present danger to planet Earth, you need only look at oil and gas development, which has spurted dramatically in the second year of the Trump interregnum. This 02.28.19 article in “The Revelator” notes that oil and gas companies filed for a record 6,570 new permits in January, the highest in five years.
The expansion is worsened by the administration’s deregulatory agenda. “Under the current administration there’s been a major rollback in oversight of the oil and gas sector, especially methane emissions, leakage, venting and flaring,” says Julie McNamara, with the Union of Concerned Scientists. Natural gas contains methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Environmentalism’s godfather has a pungent observation in the piece, which lays out some ways citizens can respond:
“Given the sequence of scientific climate reports and climate-linked natural disasters, this is definitely Nero drilling while Rome burns,” says environmental activist Bill McKibben. “History will wonder what we were thinking — or if we were.”
TWO | The ‘Villainous Act’ of the Fossil Fuel Plutocrat
Speaking of the fossil fuel industrial complex—it helps to sum up. To keep an eye on the prize when the latest chaff flies from the Climate Change Denial Powers-That-Be. Prominent climate scientist Michael Mann does this well in a 02.13.19 interview with Cosmos magazine, on the occasion of Mann being named awarded the 2019 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement:
The science that we are doing is a threat to the world’s most powerful and wealthiest special interests. The most powerful and wealthiest special interest that has ever existed: the fossil fuel industry.
They have used, he adds, huge resources to create fake scandals and to fund a worldwide disinformation campaign “aimed at vilifying the scientists, discrediting the science, and misleading the public and policymakers.” Mann proceeds to not mince words:
Arguably, it is the most villainous act in the history of human civilisation, because it is about the short-term interests of a small number of plutocrats over the long-term welfare of this planet and the people who live on it.
What to do? I recommend the whole interview, especially if you need a climate despair “buck up.” As Mann notes, things are indeed dire, and “pretty bad climate impacts” are occurring now and on the way. But we are finally getting on the path we need to be on:
There are no physical obstacles to averting catastrophic warming of the planet. The only obstacles at this point are political ones. And those are surmountable.”
THREE | Now, a word from a polar bear
Look closely now.
FOUR | The Kids Are Right
In The Guardian on 02.25.19, Kate Aronoff weighs in with a piece which ponders the dust-ups between the supposed adults in the room (Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, etc.) and the new and rising crop of climate change activist youngsters, in a piece subtitled: ‘Older politicians are too quick to write off younger climate activists. But where are their solutions to the climate crisis?’
The kids, in other words, are right. They will also be the ones forced to live with the consequences of the choices politicians make in the next several years. That’s not an unfamiliar dynamic in climate politics. Residents of climate vulnerable nations who are already dealing with rising tides and temperatures have long been the ones pushing for the most ambitious action at the international level, chanting “1.5 to survive” through the halls of UN climate talks.
Communities in the US forced to live with the health impacts of extraction – from Houston to the Bay Area – have for years sought an end to the drilling that’s threatening to cook us. As they have in the last few weeks, adults in the room – whether US negotiators at the UN or big beltway conservation organizations – have in each case offered sage counsel: be realistic!
But as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change noted in its unnerving October 2018 report, avoiding climate breakdown at this point will mean a “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society,” Aronoff writes, “including massive investments in renewable energy and new technology and going to war with the world’s most powerful industry, fossil fuels.” The Green New Deal has its deficiencies, she adds.
But none have proposed a workable alternative to the economy-wide mobilization the Green New Deal sets out to accomplish, to rapidly electrify the American economy and reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2030. Details still need to be worked out on that plan, of course. But it remains the only idea on the table even remotely approaching the “wartime footing” climate scientists are increasingly insistent is necessary to avert catastrophe.
FIVE | Tweet of the Week
This tweet surfaced a response from award-winning “biosphere journalist” Stephen Leahy, who pointed to a 2017 blogpost from his site titled “Climate Change Explained in 164 Words”:
The moon has no atmosphere so it is scorching hot (+100C) during the day and bitterly cold (-150C) at night. The Earth has an atmosphere made up of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases. Over 150 years ago scientists proved that CO2 traps heat from the sun. We also know without any doubt that burning fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal emits CO2.
Measurements, not computer models or theories, measurements show that there is now 46% more CO2 in the atmosphere than 150 years ago before massive use of fossil fuels. That extra CO2 is like putting another blanket on at night even though you are already nice and warm.
The Earth is now 1.0 C hotter on average according to the latest measurements. Heat is a form of energy and with so much more energy in our atmosphere our weather system is becoming supercharged resulting in stronger storms, worse heat waves, major changes in when and where rain falls and more.
PS | You Promised Cartoons
I did. Here is an uplifting weather report by Matt Wuerker, staff cartoonist and illustrator for POLITICO. Please pass this issue forward if it was forwarded to you. And subscribe. Be well! | Douglas John Imbrogno, Changing Climate Times Curator and Concierge
