Month 2, Day 7: Dinosaurs, anyone?

USA Today gets a rambling, inarticulate screed that starts with the Supreme Court and ends with Dinosaurs. One day somebody’s going to publish something. It’s gotta happen.

The recent decision by the Supreme Court to allow unlimited corporate spending in our elections will have far-reaching consequences on our lives. Nowhere will these be more profound than when corporations take on the complex issues of climate. Why? Because addressing the worst effects of global climate change demands genuine long-term thinking — and corporations, by the requirements of their charters, are only able to think in the short term.

The worst-case planetary scenarios suggested by scientists like Dr. James Hansen can be summed up in one word: Venus. More favorable climate projections have huge numbers of deaths and dislocations, with costs in the trillions of dollars. Needless to say, human extinction would be bad for business.

With gigatons of Arctic methane starting to melt and enter the atmosphere, and an increase in oceanic acidification beginning to threaten the food chain that supports over a billion people, there is no time to waste. We need strong and effective climate legislation, and we need it soon. But since forestalling these outcomes may require Big Energy to relinquish a few percentage points of profit in the next quarter, we can expect another type of pollution instead: corporate-funded disinformation touting the benefits of atmospheric CO2 levels last seen when dinosaurs walked the earth.

Warren Senders