Humans should worry, but nature will be fine
I have not written much about global climate change here, something that is now impossible to dispute, unless you are a politician in thrall to the deep pockets of big fossil fuel, which apparently includes a large majority of our elected federal officials. Pretending humanity does not face an existential threat when faced daily with deadly evidence may be the single worst effect of Donald Trump’s reign.
You’ll note that I said the threat is to humanity, not the planet as a whole. An important distinction. Yes, we are doing catastrophic damage to our environment but the ultimate price may be paid by us in the long run. The planet will be just fine. Why? Because as a system it is naturally self-righting and balanced. Eliminate the cancer, us, and nature will bounce back, fast.
I suppose we should take some kind of reassurance from that but in reality no one wants to die in a flood, lose everything to fire, or watch some unexpected virus ravage mankind, all potential effects of our addiction to burning fossil fuels. I think I speak for most by saying I want to live and fix this mess. It’s not too late though many will die before we actually take this thing seriously.
The oil industry has known this was coming since the sixties. They invented scenario planning where they had scientists theorize about the effects of their products long term and create logical projections of the future, a future we find ourselves in right now.
That big lead time, and their knowledge of what was coming, gave them a huge jump in dealing with global warming. Instead they chose a massive spin campaign spread over decades to sow doubt while they raked in massive profits. And used a fraction of those profits to buy influence until no U.S. politician could survive without their addictive flow of money.
Cynical? Not really, this is not news to anyone who pays attention. There’s simply too much evidence to the point where the oil lobby doesn’t really even try to cover anything up anymore.
Example. Donald Trump, with our money, has been buying out offshore wind energy leases, paying companies to stop building alternative (non oil) energy resources, energy resources that do not pollute and are sustainable. The payments are in the billions, like everything else these days, and when everything is measured in those huge numbers there are plenty of opportunities for enterprising crooks to skim off lucrative bits for themselves.
Those ‘bits’ can easily add up to billions and we are seeing lots of evidence that Trump and his people are taking their share. This is compounded by a leader who has no empathy for anyone or anything due to his monstrous narcissism. There is no such thing as guilt, he simply does not care and he has surrounded himself with others of like mind.
Get what you can while the getting is good and to hell with the future.
Unfortunately it looks like that mantra has infected much of our Congress and even the highest court. The oil companies and others have succeeded in convincing us that it’s hopeless to fight this thing. But, as floods, fires, crazy weather, and disease flourish, those jaded politicians still have to go home and pretend things are not changing.
Except they are and it has become impossible to deny reality when in front of a room full of voters who have lost everything. Yet, nothing is getting done, in reality we don’t even mouth the words ‘climate change’ or ‘warming’. It is looking like the only thing to break the stranglehold of money and denial is for people to lose their lives and livelihoods. Ask any farmer.
When you work outside all day trying to grow or build things, you get a sense of the weather that most of us rarely understand. It’s like old sailors who can smell a windshift or pressure change instinctually. And farmers know how bad it is because they live it from day to day. All the advanced farm technology cannot hide that fact.
The really frustrating thing about this, and ironically, the best thing about this is that alternative clean energy is flourishing despite efforts to shut it down. It flourishes because it is profitable, more profitable with growth than fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas which require huge systems to burn it into energy, transmit it, and dig it out of the ground.
Building a modern oil refinery is very expensive compared to building a wind farm or solar array and once built those clean sources are low maintanence and work 24/7. Where’s the proof? Look to Europe and China where alternative energy now generates more energy than the dirty coal it replaces.
Right now the biggest impediment to expanding these resources is our own government which has been stonewalling true innovation and widespread deployment at every turn. It defies logic that any politician with grandchildren would act to ensure those children’s lives will be lived on a planet being torn apart unnecessarily because of short term profits.
I’ve written about the growing movement to rebuild our democracy after the debacle of the Trump years. The theme there, articulated best by Pete Buttigieg, is the need to not just return to normal but to build something new. A major effort to repel the fossil fuel consortiums and invest in clean energy has to be central to that plan.
Encouragingly, the innovation has continued with amazing improvements in energy storage and transmission but these require major capital investment. One great example of innovation going on now is the agrovoltaic movement that combines solar arrays with farming under those arrays. The solar panels provide protection from heat and broiling sun in more arid areas where that sun can be harvested for energy.
The earth doesn’t care. Mother Nature will thrive but maybe not in ways we can live with. This place seems to be unique in the universe in how the planet evolved to be an ideal home for humans and a vast array of flora and fauna despite our boneheaded and shortsighted insistence on living for today and the hell with the next generations.
The good news is this current aging generation of leaders, who have largely gone along with the conspiracy to keep us burning fossil fuels, are on their way out, as is a President who never thinks of anything but his own needs for adulation, adulation which is souring fast.
He is done and now is the time to get this thing back on the right track.
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Thanks for the real,
Martin
(Need a break from the mayhem? Check out my new newsletter, Rich, Without Money. It’s my counterbalance to what I write here. Simple observations of what we should really be paying attention to).
Nature is infinitely patient, unlike people who want to see results within a lifetime.