One Word Which Condemns Conservatives Forever! “Climate!”
Climate Change is the most ominous, ferocious, disruptive, debilitating, devastating event that humanity has ever faced. The only plan conservatives have for it… is to make it worse as quickly as they can.
It is absurdly, ridiculously, tragically, pathetically amusing to hear Americans — and other folk around the world — describing the “biggest problem facing the nation” as immigrants, or abortion rights, or crime, or inflation, or the housing crisis, or any other such malady which in their narrow, self-absorbed delusions (lordy, lordy… transgender kids, drag queens, “Critical Race Theory,” “Bud Lite,” “Jews will not replace us!”… what in the holy hell?) preclude them from the slightest understanding that these are pimples upon cultures around the world which have already been informed and forewarned by experts that their entire physical existence is facing impending catastrophe, perhaps even annihilation.
While ice sheets melt, seas rise, wildfires rage, floods swell, tornadoes rampage, hurricanes multiply and strengthen, heatwaves broil, winter events grow more and more freakish and species blink out by the scores, our society is whistling, “Que Sera, Sera… whatever will be will be.”
Just at the very moment when humanity — if it is remotely close to as intelligent as we love to tell ourselves — should be coming together to mitigate this rapidly rising, uber-dangerous colossus, instead we are starting wars, whether in Ukraine or Gaza or elsewhere, stirring up tribal divisions, doubling-down on the actual causes of this conflagration, and egging on the worst of our own ignorance and selfishness so as to ensure that we bumble, stumble and fumble our way straight into the raging cauldron, all the while turning up the thermostat.
The leaders of this “strategy,” as well as legions of soldier-pawns eager to conform to the order of the clan, are conservatives, here in America and elsewhere around the world. What are they conserving? As always, their own advantage, privilege and power. Nothing else. And that nothing includes the very ground we stand upon, the very air we breathe, the very water we drink and food we eat and shelter we take.
If there is anything that deserves to be conserved, it is our planet. Without it? Well, kiss it all goodbye. That “human” experiment didn’t end up working very well.
But in this case, the better “conservatives” are liberals. Only liberals give a damn about the world. Because, you see, to give a damn about the world you cannot be laser-focused on your own advantage, privilege and power. You have to care about the “other,” whether that is another person, another culture, another life form, or even inanimate objects such as the atmosphere, the ocean, mountains, rivers, prairies, all of it. This is actually true across the board with other issues, other things that really should be conserved… like truth, virtue, compassion, integrity, honesty, honor, law, science, art, beauty, etc.. These are all corruptible, even expendable, to the conservative impulse. The liberal impulse… to liberate from abuse or oppression… is the better arbiter of what should, and should not, be conserved. Let us never forget that conservatives were willing to die (well, to send others to die) to conserve SLAVERY!
I wince at the phrase “climate change.” It is a cop-out. Some three decades ago, it became the description for what is happening in our planet’s atmosphere, as liberals capitulated to conservative scorn for the more accurate description “Global Warming,” which was deemed too scary. Damn straight it’s scarier. That’s the whole frickin’ point. It should be scary as hell because it is, in fact… bringing on hell, literally. The climate is changing alright. It’s getting hotter! That’s the “change.” There never was, and certainly is not now, any sane reason to downplay, sanitize or mollycoddle the depth and breadth of the trouble that is coming for us. Trouble that we, and no one or nothing else, caused, yet just about all life on Earth will suffer from.
But if “climate” is the conservatives’ preferred term, let us hang it around their neck like a stinking, dead albatross carcass. They are the Climate Cons. Climate Deniers. Climate Debunkers. Climate Delayers. Climate Cheaters. Climate Liars. Climate Abusers. Climate Criminals. And this, as I have previously described, is the biggest crime in the history of the world, perhaps the history of the Universe. We consider murder the ultimate crime. These Climate Destroyers are working to murder Mother Earth! Which, if accomplished, will murder us all! Let us begin, now, the rain of shame upon them that history will exact for their insane folly.
The realization that the fossil-fuel charged industrial age would warm the planet goes back well over a century and a quarter. In 1896, the Swedish physicist-chemist, Svante Arrhenius, recognized the probability that massive CO2 releases would raise global temperatures. In the 1930s, an American naturalist, G.S. Callendar, raised the alarm, a lone voice insisting that the volume of fossil fuel emissions (during the Depression!) was certain to eventually create a greenhouse effect. By the early 1960s, measurements had confirmed consistent rising CO2 levels were increasing average temperatures. As climate science became more sophisticated, the great complexity of observed factors led a few scientists in the early 1970s to postulate that the planet just might be heading toward a new Ice Age. But that notion quickly melted as more and more data poured in, reinforcing the opposite reality. By the late 70s, climate science was firm: the globe is warming.
Yet the initial prognosis from that data was not so alarming. Yes, the world is warming, but the situation won’t become acute for a century. Plenty of time to figure things out. That prediction didn’t last long. By the mid-1980s, climate scientists admitted that they were wrong. As CO2 and other greenhouse gasses increased year after year, Global Warming is happening much faster than they assumed. We have not a century but mere decades to attempt to reverse course. That public announcement, and warning, was forty years ago.
Worse news followed. By the late 1990s it was realized that within the complexity of the planetary system, massive wells of contained greenhouse gasses, locked up in ice fields, the deep ocean, tundra and other frozen or pressurized locations could be released if global temperatures rose too high. Or, from forests and fields, if they were set on fire.
We are now on the very precipice of triggering the release of those greenhouse bombs. What are we doing to make sure we don’t trip that doomsday trigger? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Indeed, many are urging that we continue to hurry forward… into the abyss!
How did we get here, with a Sword of Damocles as big as the entire sky hanging over our heads? We have known for four decades that Global Warming is an existential monster coming. In this epic, not just Winter is Coming! It is here. And it is bringing along with it its even meaner big brother: Scalding, Scorching, Baking, Frying, Evaporating, Melting, Excoriating Summer . We all are going to be toast in short order. The seas will rise, even as they are dying. Lakes and rivers will go extinct. Crops will fail. Food supplies will be disrupted. Towns and cities will fall, some wiped off the map. Economies will be shattered. Nations will falter. Hundreds of millions, more likely billions, of climate refugees will be on the move. To where? If you could even afford a shuttle to Mars, you will find breathing a challenge.
Tra-la-la, hum the conservatives… many of them still spewing their denial or downplaying tripe. They have no plan to do a single thing about any of it, not if it might cost them a penny in profit, or in the slightest interfere with their “way of life.” A giant mass of humans in America and across the planet take this mindless mirth and lack of official action on the matter as a strong signal that everything is gonna be alright. No need to worry. That’s something way down the line. If ever. Whatever. Que Sera, Sera.
We humans seem to be the only species that know we are going to die. That concept brings with it a deep sadness and anxiety. So we have evolved a way of coping. We don’t think about it. Not until we are forced to. Then, if at all possible, we quickly get back to not thinking about it. That is precisely what humanity is doing with the prospect of Global Warming. And professional conservatives, of all stripes, are leaning into that very cognitive pattern. Nothing to see here, folks. Keep buying!
But in reality, this non-response only does one thing: it escalates the problem. The less we do to mitigate the cause, the faster and harder Global Warming is going to hit us. And these hits are no joke. Hundreds of thousands of people have already been smacked, one way or another. Those increases in occurrence and magnitude of hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, wildfires, floods, heatwaves, freaky winter events we have witnessed over the past decade are merely harbingers of far worse yet to come. No less than the U.S. Department of Defense has identified the №1 domestic threat to be… Global Warming. You wouldn’t know it by conservative policy, or lack thereof. For this greatest of all threats ever, conservatives offer: Drill, baby, drill!
Global Warming is going to disrupt everything. Every life on the planet, human and otherwise, is going to be affected by Global Warming. The majority of them adversely. The very livability of this entire, beautiful planet is now in doubt. Conservatives don’t give a damn.
They have other things on their mind, usually some kind of oppression or abuse of some “other.” Some even want to start a civil war. Right now. As a planetary maelstrom gathers. Ah, the brilliance, their “white supremacy” on full display.
Come to think of it, maybe it would be better to just start all over again here on this magical orb floating in infinite space. Earth doesn’t deserve this. The entire rest of the biosphere didn’t cause this. If this is who we are, this planet is better off without us. It doesn’t seem right that all other life forms have to go down with us… you know, as like the evil Noah and his Ark gambit. If that story doesn’t turn you off that “god,” probably nothing will. So maybe we should just all kill each other off… before Global Warming does it for us.
If something like that is the conservative plan, it is their only one. And, of course, it would equate perfectly with their essential impulse: to conserve their own advantage, privilege and power. They have absolutely nothing else to offer. They can’t imagine anything else. They cannot break away from their innate selfishness. They are the Climate Criminals, one way or another. And voting for them, makes you an accomplice.
