Bummer: Leaders Look At Climate Crisis (scam) And Shrug

Because this has everything to do with Science and not politics, right?

Our leaders look climate change in the eyes, and shrug

If you have cultivated an Edgar Allen Poe-like appreciation for the macabre, there is a certain sort of amusement to be had in watching the developed world deal with the insistent onslaught of climate change. Like many horror stories, this one features a main character full of futile determination to maintain a sense of normalcy even as the ominous signs of doom become ever more impossible to ignore. We can chuckle knowing that the monster is going to come for our designated protectors. We stop chuckling knowing that it’s coming for all of us next.

It is easy to imagine that a real live existential threat to our way of life would prompt any society to assume war footing and marshal everything it has to fight for survival. Unfortunately, this response only takes hold in actual war situations, where the threat is “other people that we can shoot and kill in glorious fashion”. When the threat comes not from enemy people, but from our own nature, we find it much harder to rise to the occasion. Where is the glory in recognizing the folly of our own greed and profligacy? Leaders are not elected on such things. We want leaders who will give us more, leading us ever onwards, upwards and into the grave.

See, what they want is dictators who will force everyone to comply. Oh, and hate Capitalism

As overwhelming and omnipresent as the climate crisis is, it is not the core issue. The core issue is capitalism. Capitalism’s unfettered pursuit of economic growth is what caused climate change, and capitalism’s inability to reckon with externalities – the economic term for a cost that falls onto third parties – is what is preventing us from solving climate change. Indeed, climate change itself is the ultimate negative externality: fossil-fuel companies and assorted polluting corporations and their investors get all the benefits, and the rest of the world pays the price. Now the entire globe finds itself trapped in the gruesome logic of capitalism, where it is perfectly rational for the rich to continue doing something that is destroying the earth, as long as the profits they reap will allow them to insulate themselves from the consequences.

Congratulations, free market evangelists: this is the system you have built. It doesn’t work. I don’t want to lean too heavily on the touchy-feely, Gaia-esque interpretation of global warming as the inevitable wounds of an omniscient Mother Earth, but you must admit that viewing humanity and its pollution as a malicious virus set to be eradicated by nature is now a fairly compelling metaphor. Homo sapiens rose above the lesser animals thanks to our ability to wield logic and reason, yet we have somehow gotten ourselves to a place where the knowledge of what is driving all these wildfires and floods is not enough to enable us to do anything meaningful to stop it. The keystone experience of global capitalism is to gape at a drought-fueled fire as it consumes your home, and then go buy a bigger SUV to console yourself.

Surprise? I have to wonder if these climate cultists, who so rarely practice what they preach beyond changing a few lightbulbs, think a system like in Cuba, the Soviet Union, North Korea, and Venezuela, to name a few, will work? Will they be good with no more flatscreens, no more TV shows and films except for government propaganda, limited food, and so much more? Will they be upset when the UK Guardian can no longer afford to stay in business?

Capitalism is a machine made to squeeze every last cent out of this planet until there is nothing left. We can either fool ourselves about that until it kills us, or we can change it.

Remember, this is all about Science!

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7 Responses to “Bummer: Leaders Look At Climate Crisis (scam) And Shrug”

  1. Hairy says:

    Light bulbs!!!!Teach has never forgiven them taking away those warm red incandescent bulbs
    And forcing the cold blue CFLs to age his face in the mirror
    Teach other cults have a Supreme Leader

    Why doesn’t the climate cult?

    • Kye says:

      “Teach other cults have a Supreme Leader
      Why doesn’t the climate cult?”

      They do, Karl Marx or haven’t you noticed?

      • Elwood P. Dowd says:

        Mr Marx died some 140 yrs ago.

        The leader of the global warming movement is the observation that increasing atmospheric CO2 is causing the Earth to warm. The increasing atmospheric CO2 is a result of humans burning fossil fuels.

        • Kye says:

          I wasn’t aware the founder of a cult movement had to live forever to qualify in your book. Nevertheless, Marx is your god, Al Gore your pope, Junta Joe your conciliare and you followers the morons who made them rich.

          • Elwood P. Dowd says:

            You said leader earlier, now you say founder. Make up your mind.

            Scientific theories do not have “leaders” but develop as evidence accumulates. Someone such as you, who views every issue through a partisan lens and is ignorant regarding scientific principles, of course gets it wrong. You ascribe YOUR deficits to others – it’s called projection. You are a member of the tRump Kult with all his ignorant and cruel beliefs.

        • Elwood P. Dowd says:

          Are you really claiming that Karl Marx was the founder of the theory of anthropogenic global warming or are you confused in your dottage?

    • Jl says:

      Incandescent bulbs have bern back for a while, John. Anyway, besides taking away the freedom to choose, could you tell us what those years of no incandescent bulbs actually did climate-wise? Didn’t think so…

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