written 6 August 2023
published 13 August 2023
Last week, saw 11 inches of rain in Kentucky and Tennessee, 12 inches in Okinawa, and 25 inches in 24 hours in Beijing, creating torrential floods. After a 2-day respite, Phoenix faces weeks more above 110°F, Tunisia hit 120°F, southern Iran hit 123°F, shutting down the country for 2 days, while Algeria hit 135°F. Canada now has 1,000 fires and Italy has 1,400. Despite being winter in the southern hemisphere, Chile hit 102°F, surpassing summer records, the second largest lake in Bolivia has gone dry, and Antarctic winter sea ice levels are at record low. AAA quit writing new insurance in Florida, the fifth company this year.
The climate crisis is a symptom of the deeper cultural illusion of separation. Nowhere is the expression of separation more obvious than the increasingly polarized political arena.
The American democratic system, despite its limitations, was a step away from previous politics of separation. The ideal of democracy is that everyone has a say in making the rules, which then apply to everyone. The system originally enfranchised just white men, but grew to include women and people of color. As more are included, those that previously held control feel threatened.
The GOP has traditionally been the party of big business, and, in the last few decades, aligned with the Christian Right to support their limited goals as well. While these groups (religious extremists and the outrageously wealthy) are relative powerful, they are minorities in the voter base, and demographic changes have been working against the GOP. In addition, the party has aggressively pushed more extreme policies supporting wealth inequity, misogyny, racism, and religious intolerance, which are increasingly unpopular with the voting public.
Rather than change those policies, the response has been to dismantle the structure of our democracy to retain power, using extreme gerrymandering, voter restrictions, fear mongering, and blatant lies. The extremely conservative Supreme Court has legalized unlimited campaign funding. Propaganda, such as the steady stream from Fox News, sways folks and muddies the water.
"Republican-controlled “Red” states, almost across the board, have higher rates of: spousal abuse, obesity, smoking, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, abortion (now “forced births”), bankruptcies and poverty, homicide and suicide, infant mortality, maternal mortality, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault, dropouts from high school, divorce, contaminated air and water, opiate addiction and deaths, unskilled workers, parasitic infections, income and wealth inequality, covid deaths and unvaccinated people, federal subsidies to states (“Red State Welfare”), people on welfare, child poverty, homelessness, spousal murder, unemployment, deaths from auto accidents, people living on disability, and gun deaths." (Daily Kos 29Jun23)
If Republicans return to power in 2024, they promise to remake the country, eliminating decades of cultural progress. Rights of women, gays, and workers, religious tolerance, and support of democratic institutions globally, are all on the chopping block.
For the last two months, I have been reporting weather extremes of the previous week. This is already a record-breaking summer, and we have months to go, including the hurricane season. Despite the increasing impact of an over-heated climate, climate denial is well funded by the fossil fuel industry, which still thinks their massive short-term profits are more important than the risk of toasting the entire economy. Consequently, Republican leadership denies there is a problem, plans to stop every effort to address the issue, and aggressively expand fossil fuel extraction and usage,
Their "Project 2025" plan would "block wind and solar power from being added to the electrical grid; gut funding for the Environmental Protection Agency; eliminate the Department of Energy’s renewable energy offices; prohibit states from adopting California’s tailpipe pollution standards, transfer many federal environmental regulatory duties to Republican state officials; and prop up the fossil fuel industry." (Inside Climate News 1Aug23)
Not only would our national climate response halt, but the US is a quarter of the global economy, so the planetary effort would be hampered as well, risking the survival of our species. Of course, this assumes a Republican, and specifically Trump, wins the 2024 presidential election.
The question becomes, how bad does it have to get before general voter self-preservation kicks in? For thousands of years, humanity has lived the belief of "us versus them", despite increasing evidence that we are all "us". Consequently, any war on "them" also destroys "us", and we are on track to collective suicide. As this truth sinks in, we have to act accordingly.
