Massive flooding in W VA
What Half of the American Electorate Seems to Miss
As raging wars threaten to engulf us, as politics unravels our democracy, there is a bigger, more obvious issue.
Even as political storms whirl around us, encouraging Americans to demonize and dehumanize those with opposing views, I look back on those purportedly villainous MAGA southerners and recall some of the warmest most hospitable people I have ever met. I still have those memories. They bring a warm smile to my lips, as I wonder if my little one-year-old granddaughter will ever be able to experience that warmth. My California-born-and-raised son, today a successful financial consultant, loved his undergraduate education in North Carolina and his MBA studies in Virginia. I keep wondering how we can be “Americans” again.
But as Republicans in Congress fall prey to Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” aimed to coddle spoiled-brat billionaires and mega-millionaires with continuing and new tax cuts these brats absolutely do not need, programs that will probably follow the pattern of all the recent such rich-folks tax cuts and generate no real solid new jobs or businesses… Yet these tax cuts will definitely tank any effort to control our ever-growing deficit that has the rest of the world downgrading the dollar and dollar-denominated assets, while kicking the interest rate on our deficit borrowings (e.g., the sale of treasury bonds) to the highest rates in recent decades. The credit-rating services are lowering US government to new, never before witnessed, depths.
To accommodate those tax cuts that enable third and fourth homes, yachts, private (mega-polluting) jets, champagne travel and luxury, there have to be some sacrifices, the GOP tells us, creating mythologies to justify their actions (“Medicaid recipients don’t work,” when those able to work actually do; “there is massive fraud and waste in Veterans programs, Medicare and Social Security,” when even DOGE failed to find any real proof of this assertion)… but why are those sacrifices loaded on to those least able to afford them?
Hey, the Republican Party maintains as a basic platform either that the horrors of climate change are exaggerated or non-existent. They want to take down non-fossil fuel infrastructure projects, oddly creating most of the relevant new jobs in red states. They want to encourage the old world “drill, baby, drill” or “extract, baby, extract” fossil fuel mantras that seem to fall on deaf investor ears… but they are forcing this damaging mandate anyway. “We can’t afford to fix it.” “It is a global problem that we cannot control.” “We choose business over tree-hugging, climate change wokeness.” Nature does not care one whit; she started with nothing and has no issue starting over.
Our divide and conquer political battle may take down the United States, replacing democracy with one-man rule, but pretending climate change is not a serious problem will continue to kill us, less slowly all the time. Migrating insects, following the change heat patterns, are bringing diseases to areas not remotely prepared for the resultant outbreaks. Migrating farmers all over the world are moving to areas where crops can still grow… but they are hardly welcomed with open arms.
All of the “trigger” climate occurrences have been met or almost met. The Outer Banks in North Carolina are disappearing. Miami area streets are routinely flooded after heavy rain. Condos are sinking in Florida, due to a very porous limestone substratum, sink holes are abounding and property insurance and required retrofitting are so expensive that many are losing their homes with no place to go. Cities all across the United States are experiencing life-destroying heat waves. There is almost no place within the United States – which is itself a selfish perspective – where billions of dollars of climate-related damage are not raging. But don’t worry, the administration has NOAA’s weather tracking, NASA’s older weather satellites are not being replaced, and FEMA is on the verge of being shut down or seriously defunded. New diseases? Defund the CDC.
“Earth's energy imbalance is growing faster than anyone expected — and scientists don't understand why… To complicate matters several NASA satellites that provide the highest-resolution picture of this imbalance are nearing the end of their lives, and researchers fear their lone replacement isn't sufficient. In the worst case scenario, scientists could lose one of the leading indicators of climate change, as the next-best way of measuring the energy imbalance has a lag of about 10 years.
“‘What we get from [these] satellites is roughly one decade faster data, so that's why it's so critical,’ Thorsten Mauritsen, a professor in the department of meteorology at Stockholm University in Sweden and the lead author of a commentary on the issue, told Live Science. ‘The absolute best option is that NASA continues.’…
“Earth's energy imbalance is the difference between the amount of energy our planet receives from the sun and the amount it radiates outward into space. The imbalance is mainly caused by our emissions of greenhouse gases, which trap a portion of the energy radiating from Earth inside the atmosphere, driving temperatures up.
“Satellite data suggest Earth's energy imbalance has more than doubled over the past two decades, massively exceeding the increase predicted by climate models. In 2023, the imbalance reached 1.8 watts per square meter (0.16 watts per square foot), which was twice what models estimated based on rising greenhouse gas emissions, according to the commentary, which was published May 10 in the journal AGU Advances — but scientists still aren't sure why there has been such an increase in the imbalance recently.” Sascha Pare in June 5th LiveScience.com. You do have to wonder why our leaders either only learn lessons the hard way, live in denial land or are at their best when they simply pass the buck to future administrations and generations. But nature is not so flip… resulting damage does not get kicked down the road; it is front and center NOW!
I’m Peter Dekom, and I guess if we do not care that gun violence is the number one killer of American children and teens, why would we express the slightest concern that we are destroying their future by underestimating climate change?
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment