Yes, capitalism’s at war, fighting against all efforts to limit global warming and climate change. This is WWIII, the defining moment of the 21st century. Why? “One word in the latest draft report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sums up why climate inaction is so uniquely immoral: Irreversible.”
Irreversible? Not to capitalists. They’re betting the future of the human race they’re right.
Big Oil, the GOP and right-wing fundamentalists are all climate-science deniers, absolutely certain they are right, they will win WWIII: Exxon Mobil is spending $37 billion annually on new drilling. U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue says we have enough oil to last over two centuries. Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s a Luddite. Oklahoma GOP Senator Jim Inhofe published “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.”
But, what if the Right is wrong? What if global warming really is irreversible? What if their gamble doesn’t pay off? Too bad. Too late. Capitalism has no Plan B. So billions of humans just won’t survive the 1,000-year Dust Bowl that’s ahead if Plan A fails.
Yes, it’s that huge a bet. The damage to our civilization is irreversible. And inaction is immoral. Soon we’ll pass a point of no return. After that, the damage takes 1,000 years to repair, warns ClimateProgress editor Joe Romm.
Why? Because of today’s “ongoing failure to cut carbon pollution: The catastrophic changes in climate we are voluntarily choosing to impose on our children and grandchildren, and countless generations after them, cannot be undone for hundreds of years or more.”
The Right: Capitalism is the solution … to all problems in the world
Conservative opposition is based on the economics of Big Oil and the energy industry. They believe any regulations or taxation of carbon emissions will have a negative impact on corporate earnings, shareholder dividends, production costs. As California Gov. Jerry Brown put it: There’s “virtually no Republican” in Washington that accepts climate science. And most GOP governors “openly deny climate science” despite widespread scientific evidence. Worse, Big Oil deniers spend hundreds of millions annually on lobbying for GOP votes.
Right-wingers paint global warming as a fear-mongering leftist plot designed to kill jobs, hurt GDP, promote socialism, increase taxes, and take away our constitutional freedoms, the basic talking points of Big Oil and energy billionaires. For example, when the new EPA rules were announced earlier, the conservative Townhall’s headline read, “Obama’s Grand Plan for Climate Change: Kill the Economy.” That pretty much sums up the Right’s uncompromising ideological war cry dividing Americans today.
Here’s how right-wing commentator Erick Erickson put it for Main Street America: Global warming “rejects the God of creation … opposes capitalism … manufacturing a panic … I have never once met a person who treats global warming as the most significant issue of our time … they are maladjusted, angry people in need of prayer … Let the seas rise … We can adapt … We’re all going to die. Just not today … meantime, I simply do not care about this issue.”
The Left: Capitalism’s relentless economic growth is killing the planet
On the other side of this war are left-wing leaders like Bill McKibben, author of the “End of Nature,” who years ago warned Foreign Policy readers it “may already be too late;” Silicon Valley billionaire Tom Steyner who’s backing RiskyBusiness.org with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and Pope Francis who warns that inequality and capitalism are the “root cause of all world’s problems,” a position further documented in economist Tom Piketty’s classic, “Capital in the 21st Century.”
Paul B. Farrell: 1,000 years of Dust Bowls now inevitable
No comments:
Post a Comment