written 1 Aug 2021
published 8 Aug 2021
The Republican party has abandoned all pretext of actual governance, focusing instead on denying reality and vigorously pushing increasingly absurd lies. For the last few months, they denied Trump lost, pushing the lie about voter fraud to justify destroying democracy with sweeping voter suppression laws. For more than a year they denied the reality of Covid, lying that it is a hoax and that vaccination is a fascist ploy, resulting in a new surge that is preferentially sickening and killing their own unvaccinated supporters. For decades they denied climate change, lying that it is a hoax promulgated by greedy scientist for financial gain, delaying action to avoid the increasingly apparent climate crisis making weekly headlines around the world.
But reality doesn't care what we believe. Trump did lose. Covid is real and surging with a significantly more infectious variant. Climate change is already here, costing the US almost half a trillion dollars last year alone. The core of insanity is being in conflict with reality. The Republican leadership has chosen to go insane, and is willing to destroy their supporters, our country, and the entire planet, to maintain their illusion of power.
However, a majority of American aren't willing to sacrifice themselves and their families for such narrow Republican goals. Covid vaccination rates in red areas are slowly increasing as the Delta variant overwhelms hospitals once again. Recent polls show that climate change is now the second highest public concern, behind affordable health care. Even the financial world has realized that extreme weather, let alone a dead planet, is bad for business, and begun to address the climate emergency: changing rules of corporate governance and making massive investments in renewable energy.
Unfortunately, climate scientists have pulled their punches for years. Because of the complexity of the problem, unrelenting political pressures from toxic climate deniers, and the need to issue only consensus reports, all the estimates of what will happen, and when, have been very cautious, trying not to scare the public or feed the denial trolls. The climate is changing faster than the worst-case scenarios, with events happening today that weren't projected to occur for decades yet. Consequently, to be effective at this late date, real climate response will have to be massive and rapid: a 50% reduction in carbon emissions within 100 months, with extensive carbon sequestration and complete decarbonization of the global economy, as soon as possible. This may seem like a foolishly ambitious goal, but the alternative is years of accelerating economic misery and increasing infrastructure destruction, leading inevitably to total economic collapse.
Completely independent of the growing climate crisis, the remaining fossil fuel resources will be exhausted in four or five decades at current consumption rates, necessitating a complete change to our energy economy. There is dark debate as to which will take out the economy first, resource depletion or toasting the planet.
Massive mobilization occurred in response to World War 2 and the Covid epidemic, as a result of public will, and political leadership. The good news in all this is that we have technological alternatives which did not exist until relatively recently. Instead of burning finite, polluting, stored energy, we can begin to live on the abundant energy flux from the sun.
There are valid reasons to despair this can come to pass, as the solution will require an unprecedented global effort on a planet rife with greed and nationalistic competition. We can't support our current level of wasteful energy usage, so energy efficiency and local resilience will be necessary parts of the project. This must benefit everyone on the planet, including all the other life forms, so our patterns of exclusive gain must evolve. We have been sold the bill of goods that "stuff" will make us free and happy, yet it has never worked, and we have depleted the world attempting to fill a spiritual void with material things. Quality of life is not the same thing as quantity of things.
The climate crisis is both a challenge and an opportunity for humanity to grow up and really manifest "peace on Earth". Even if we fail in our attempt to make this energy transition, the goal is worth the effort, providing the possibility of full employment in meaningful work, creating the possibility of a viable future for our great grandchildren.
