28 for '23

Just in case you weren't hiding under a rock or watching Fox News lately, COP 28, the latest summit dealing with climate change, recently concluded in Dubai, and the participants at that summit announced that there is a goal to wean us silly humans off fossil fuels for good.

A goal, not a plan.

But the statement does take into account the growing popularity of clean-energy technology, such as wind turbines (like the ones above) and the realization that, while petroleum may continuously form in the earth from dead matter and all that, we're using it faster than the innards of the earth can generate it.  The United Arab Emirates more or less admitted as much by hosting the latest COP summit in Dubai, one of the seven oil-rich sheikdoms that make up the U.A.E.

Unfortunately, the seriousness of another federation among the world's nations remains in doubt.  The United States is full of climate-change deniers who still refuse to believe that climate change is a thing despite three major rainstorms in as many weeks in the Northeast this December, each of which has been the equivalent of three or four feet of snow (which we were never in danger of getting, since it's been pretty mild for December of late).  And that's just one example of the extreme weather we've been having on this third rock from the sun.  These deniers - science skeptics who yet believe the literal meaning of the Bible hook, line and sinker - are ready to work 25/8 to return to the Presidency a man who wants to ban electric cars, thinks turbines cause cancer, wants to be a dictator for just his first day back in office to force more oil drilling (when an executive order would suffice), and is ready to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement a second time. 

One science writer says that even if all that happens, the world shouldn't worry.  Other countries are so well invested in reversing climate change and are so well prepared to take it on that if Trump does become President again, the only people who will suffer greatly are Americans.

Given our gun violence, our lack of guaranteed health care, and our overprocessed food, haven't we Americans already suffered in our own private hell long enough?