Year 3, Month 9, Day 8: It’s After The End Of The World. Don’t You Know That Yet?

Steve Stajich offers a caustic assessment of the GOP’s resistance to reality, in the Santa Monica Mirror (CA):

At some point years ago, an exhausted demonstrator warning of global warming probably set down his or her protest sign and sighed heavily, adding, “Those who think we’re kidding won’t believe us until they’re knee-deep in flood waters at their own picnic.”

CUT TO: Tampa, Florida. Exterior GOP Convention. Sign on door reads, “Monday is canceled because of violent weather caused by altered climate. The Oil and Coal Lobby Cocktail Hour will be moved to higher ground.”

For those in the GOP, or anywhere, who are still in denial about climate change and global warming I guess the next question is, “I’m sorry but what, exactly, will it take?”

Romney-Ryan (or as I’m starting to think of it, the Kraken…) believes that there is a jackpot of jobs waiting for unemployed Americans in the “development” of domestic energy supplies. Drill, baby, drill. Coal interests tout a “clean coal” that, so far, does not actually exist. “Energy security” trumps any concerns we might have that the weather we’re creating with our use of fossil fuels could ultimately destroy us… for $5 a gallon.

Go ahead. Have your armageddon; let’s just get it over with. Sent September 1:

While the customs of many indigenous peoples are far from infallible (tribal views on medicine, causality and gender are often spectacularly wrong), there’s one area where we post-industrial humans could learn a crucial lesson. The whole world over, traditional cultures recognize the close interdependent relationship between their own survival and the planetary ecosystems surrounding them — an awareness placing a higher priority on societal than individual survival. Our media-saturated culture, by contrast, offers only the fleeting thrills of the moment.

The climate crisis is a profound indictment of a cultural inability to think in the long term. Our political system offers us only Hobson’s choice: whether we select complete denial (the Republican option) or platitudes coupled with inaction (the Democratic approach) the end result is the same. The tribal wisdom reminding us to consider the next seven generations in our decision-making? Now buried beneath a mountain of titillating trash.

Warren Senders