The Witness Chronicles, a Grasshopper Sub

The Witness Chronicles September 6, 2023

Politicians drop the ball on climate, the GOP is in very bad shape, and following the climate migrations of the wealthy

Sep 06, 2023

Somehow it is September and suddenly we are in the last part of 2023 and an election year looms. Here in Western NY we finally are getting hot summery weather for a few days after a cool, rainy season. But not hot compared to the rest of the country- it’s lovely here.

I had an involuntary week off from writing (see The Grasshopper) but I’m back at it for better or worse. Feels good.

There is No Serious Conversation About Climate

Is the problem too big for politicians?

Our next big political crisis is looming on the near horizon. The loons in the House of Representatives are going to defund the US government because…they can? Regardless of any logic behind this, and there appears to be none, this issue is going to suck all the air out of every room in Washington.

It’s the latest fake issue to dominate the national conversation about our future, but it’s the near future. It’s grandstanding, but it will waste months that could be used to actually govern. And, in the process, it will create enemies, frustrate working Americans and, btw, defund FEMA at a point when the federal government is being asked to step in every week for new disasters.

Biden has asked for emergency funding of $12 billion so FEMA can do its day to day job being the first emergency resource for Americans who have lost everything because of climate-related extreme weather events. Fires, hurricanes, tornados, floods, mudslides, drought. We all know the list of bad things because we literally see them everyday.

So, why is this not the central conversation among our political leaders? In fact, why is the topic a subject one half of the political world will not even acknowledge?

We all know why.

And it’s not news. Big oil, the automotive industry, and coal barons spent big money for decades buying political loyalty so they could reap huge profits, without oversight. It worked exceptionally well until the world as we know it really started falling to pieces.

Yes, the sky is falling. Ho hum.

Right now it doesn’t matter whose fault it is because that ball is rolling and it’s like that huge stone sphere in Indiana Jones that crushes everything in its path.

Except a few brave congress members. Except, nope.

They have priorities that must be addressed now. Like Hunter Biden, Joe’s black sheep son who has a history of majorly screwing up. We all know that person somewhere in our lives. Joe lost another son, a daughter, and a wife. Do you blame him for sticking with his wayward son?

Of course you do. That’s what’s wrong with this country, being loyal to sons who mess up. Then there is the issue of gay people. And Abortion. And censoring evil liberal books written to indoctrinate children. And telling historians what really happened, regardless of the actual truth.

Revise, revise, revise.

This week DeSantis refused to appear with the President as Biden met with victims of Hurricane Idalia in DeSantis’ own state. He was too busy campaigning and being seen with a democrat sends out the wrong message to voters.

That message? We can work together during tragedies.

Nope, it doesn’t look good. This guy needs new advice, stat. Do any of us want a President who will never work with the other side of the aisle, who won’t even be seen with them while they are consoling broken Americans who have lost everything?

No, not a good look.

Some Fox commentators tried to tie Biden to the fires that devastated Lahaina on Maui, a sacred indigenous spot. No comment except to say, how do these trash get airtime?

So, natural disasters are now political talking points, opportunities to get sound bites, no matter how bad they make a candidate look?

Just a reminder, there are dead loved ones in those burnt ruins in Hawaii. But let’s not think about that. Instead let’s shut the government down, freeze federal paychecks and stop progress in its tracks.

If we’re lucky we will go into a recession and screw the economy, then we might win. Or some strategical thing like that.

Meanwhile the storms are literally gathering. Better not to talk about that. Just remember who has been paying the political bills. They’re the ones who are your friends, not the American people.

An aside I cannot resist: professional blowhard Vivek Ramaswamy says definitively that climate change is a hoax. Who, exactly, is he playing to? Does he ever read the news, the actual news, stuff written by meteorologists (scientists) who study this stuff?

A hoax? That’s a talking point out of an oil company press release from 1990, when they could simply brush climate disasters off as alarmism. And Vivek, self-proclaimed genius, thinks this line will actually fly in 2024?

Look out the window, Dude. This is not normal.

I’ve been writing about how the Republican Party seems detached from reality. I am an opinion writer, an observer, but this is beyond my opinion. Even bogus news outlets like Fox can’t ignore the weather. It’s interesting to see them struggle these days with things that are no longer ideologically black and white.

You know some of them have homes or family members in the midst of these disasters. Try living in the LA area in the past few years. A rollercoaster ride is not an exaggeration.

Denial of reality when it slaps you in the face repeatedly, is pretty crazy by any standards. But when it comes to climate change, that is the bedrock Republican policy.

Ask yourselves, what does that say about the intelligence of half the people running our country?

The Republican Party is in Serious Trouble

The Primary debate was meaningless

I’ll be honest, I did not watch the debate because I knew it would be dissected endlessly on every possible media channel. I don’t have cable so I mercifully never have to watch Fox News. But I think most of the pundits and reporters are glossing over the reality, because they know they will have to cover this charade for many more months.

The reality is that these Republican challengers can debate, raise money, make fools of themselves and generally annoy any news watchers but they will accomplish nothing in the long run.

For some of them this is practice for the future when the spectre of Donald Trump is finally erased, as he either exits the scene or ends up in a prison cell. His cult will remain behind and some candidates like Ramaswamy and DeSantis hope to step into Trump’s role.

Except cults don’t work like that. Trump has charisma, a quality his competition is sorely lacking. Charisma is what keeps cults together. But this cult will fade when they are forced to face up to cold reality after the GOP primary and they have to explain why we should elect an alleged criminal.

The problem here is that the Republican Party has turned its back on reality. Their denial of climate change is the principal indicator of their failure and the most Trumpy of them doubled down on denial last night, despite the insane weather roiling the entire planet.

People were getting washed away by floods on the Vegas Strip yesterday. In the desert, in August. At least eight hundred people* are missing in Maui and almost certainly dead at this point, a tragedy denial is pretending to be normal.

*Revised to around 400 since I wrote this. Still awful.

Nothing is normal and the right don’t seem to have gotten the message. Instead they take lame shots at Biden, possibly the most effective President of the last twenty years. Yes, I wish he were younger, but attempts to paint him as feeble and senile are childish at best.

That childishness is at the heart of the Republican Party and it is a cancer killing them from within. All they have learned from Trump is how to be a spectacle of outrage against hidden conspiracies which do not exist. There’s no there there, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein.

Substance wins Presidential races, or at least it did before Trump. Little things like the economy which, when healthy, keeps incumbents in office. The economy, despite claims to the contrary, is steadily improving. We are not in a war for once, at least not a shooting one. Manufacturing is returning here and we are regaining our lead in vital technology like semiconductors.

There are shovels in the ground all over the country upgrading our critical infrastructure and creating a lot of good jobs. Yes, gas is still high but that is more of a factor of oil companies gouging us while recording sky high profits, something no politician on either side seems willing to call out.

These realities will be at the center of the election once we get past this ridiculous Republican Primary season; and they are owned by Joe Biden, lock, stock, and barrel. In a surprise move Nikki Haley actually called out a common Republican lie and admitted that Trump presided over an economic catastrophe that increased the national debt by at least seven trillion dollars.

That alone should disqualify him from ever seeing the White House again.

Then there is the question of basic human rights.

Women’s right to make their own healthcare choices. LGBQT+ people seeking freedom to be who they are without harassment. People of color not having to live in fear of the police, and general hatred against immigrants who are seeking asylum while being treated as humans.

All of these things are openly threatened by the Republican Party. Which makes no sense as these groups vote and are unlikely to vote for a party that seeks to take away their rights. So, cross off women, people of color, those who choose alternate gender and sexual preferences, and immigrants who have attained or aspire to freedom and citizenship.

Someone needs to remind the Party that white baby boomer men are not even close to a majority of voters.

All of this points to a Democrat landslide in 2024. And I have not even mentioned Gen Z who are more and more politically active and whose principal issue is the climate changes one whole party has chosen to deny.

Political parties used to announce and run on platforms, a series of policies they will pursue if elected. But the GOP eliminated policy of any kind during the Trump years until they reached the point where general denial is their only discernible policy.

It’s lazy at best and despicable at worst. But the problem is it won’t win elections.

That’s reality, not denial.

What Happens When the Rich Abandon the Hot, Dangerous Places?

Florida, Arizona, California, all the coasts

To clearly understand what it going on with the climate in your region, and to understand how it may impact your life choices, next week, next season, and in the years to come, it helps to conduct a thought experiment, one that, with the help of AI, could become a powerful tool for both scientists and ordinary citizens.

Humans excel at something called pattern recognition, seeing patterns in apparent chaos. The problem is that we tend to see the patterns that we want rather than those that are actually forming. In climate, we see this when we hear the inevitable man on the street quotes like those gathered in the news after disasters like Hurricane Idalia or the Lahaina fires.

They typically come in two categories:

“I never thought it would happen to me (us, my town, etc.)”

And

“We are definitely going to bounce back and rebuild”.

The latter often comes from a local politician. Both are the result of wishful thinking in many cases, or as I like to call it, magical thinking. A bit of science might help see the actual pattern.

Our society gathers an enormous amount of data about almost everything we do, in close to real time, but it is not what data analysts call ‘normalized’ or data made to conform to a standard (disclaimer, I am neither a data analyst or a scientist, just an observer).

It may not seem like it but the demographics of human movement could tell us an enormous amount about the real impacts of daily climate events. By real impacts, I means those that we as individuals should consider when making personal choices.

Those choices might be macro choices like where is it safe and secure to live? Or micro choices like should I hunker down or evacuate? Both can save lives, short term and long term. So how does all this data become useful for you and I and our families now?

If we look at a region in a climate danger zone like coastal Florida or the forests of California and start seeing what locals are actually doing and who those locals are demographically, a bold picture would likely emerge.

The one I would watch is what those with wealth and higher education are doing. Are they staying put or even doubling down by building bigger and better even when risk experts like insurance companies are telling us they wil no longer take that risk? If so, what do they know?

Or are they quietly selling while the market is still good and where are they quietly investing their money in their homes and communities? I’ll offer up an example.

South of Rochester, NY where I live is a large, beautiful freshwater lake called Canandaigua Lake, one of the relatively well-known Finger Lakes. It is deep, clean, and surrounded by rolling hills covered with vineyards, an idyllic setting.

And its shoreline is the most expensive freshwater property in the United States and has been for ten years. Mansions and stately estates have replaced old family cottages and craftspeople in the area are doing extremely well turning these homes into American palaces. The shores are dotted with seaplanes and elaborate docks, some connected to the homes on scenic cliffs by lifts.

These are sights most of us can only see from a boat taking a ride around the lake. Often what the road view offers is modest or hidden. The wealth here is not measured in millions, it is measured in hundreds of millions and it comes from all over the world.

How many Americans know about this new home of the ultra wealthy? I suspect most have never heard of it. Yet this big money, much of it based in NYC and Florida, has invested here, a place many associate with long winters.

We used to have long winters. But those pattens have been changing. I know from anecdotal experience that many of these people have winter places in coastal regions like Florida, Georgia, and other winter enclaves of those able to enjoy them.

But if I was a middle or even upper middle class citizen of those coastal enclaves I’d want to know, what do they know and what are they doing now and in the recent past? Is the money moving to places like Canadaigua Lake and away from those condos down south?

I imagine a global database of these real time demographics constantly gathered, probably by AI, from places like courthouses, city halls, zoning departments, voting records, school registrations, etc., that tracks these patterns. Scientists could use it to track the real time economic and social impacts of climate events as they unfold.

Communities could use it to gauge growth, make zoning and infrastructure decisions, and even determine whether rebuilding is really a viable option. To remove the short term wishful thinking, in other words. Insurance companies are already doing this and it is at the core of their business, which is risk assessment.

Can we continue to make money or not? Apparently the answe for many desirable places today the answer is not. And they are pulling their essential business out of these states and doing it fast, tearing off the bandages and getting out.

Are you asking yourselves, what do they know that I don’t? Or are you pretending it can’t happen to you or that rebuilding again and again is an option?

You might be living in lalaland. And meanwhile the good places are fewer and fewer and being quietly snapped up. I know, I live in one.

The Witness Chronicles, politics decoded

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