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?

Regime Change Before Climate Change

The climate change summit in Poland concluded earlier this month with a plan by all of the nations in attendance - except the United States - to implement the Paris Agreement.

What's the plan? How the hell should I know?  Why the hell should I care?  Because as long as the United States plans to withdraw from the climate accord in 2020, nothing the rest of the world does will matter.  The U.S. even joined oil producers such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Russia (now I get why Putin wanted Trump in the White House!) in trying to block at the conference a resolution saying that climate change is a serious problem.

The United States is, last time I checked, the second biggest carbon emitter after China, and we Americans decided a long time ago that if fighting climate change means changing the way we live, we weren't interested.  Even with more Americans willing to do their part to cut carbon emissions, many more still are not.  I can eat poultry hamburgers, rely on natural light, maximize the fuel economy in my five-cylinder Golf (I couldn't get a four), and take public transit and/or walk when possible, but too many people eat steak thrice a week, use electric lights they don't need, and go everywhere in SUVs.  And no matter how many states and companies pledge their allegiance to WASIC (the We Are Still In Coalition, the coalition of Americans honoring the Paris Agreement), it's likely never going to be enough.

Unless Donald Trump is voted out of office in 2020.

And shame on those in the Democratic leadership who attempt to keep a climate hawk from getting the party's 2020 presidential nomination like they did in 2016 (I ain't talkin' about Bernie Sanders!).  If we don't get Trump voted out, we will be the ecological outlaw of the world and we'll deserve to be boycotted - boycotted, like South Africa in the days of apartheid.  And it may already be too late by then.  Sorry to bum you all on Christmas Eve, but the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come is pointing his long, bony finger and showing us a future even scarier than Scrooge's - a world where Florida has fallen into the sea and where California is a burned out desert.  But these are only the shadows of . . . what may be.    

Let's change our administration before the climate changes.