As everyone here knows, Exxon knew about global warming in 1977 at least (and if you haven't watched AOC's master-class in committee interviews, you should (It's all of 1minute 23 seconds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGVW9vJ773k).
The thing is, with massive data collections and computers with unimaginable power, we can trace just about every cent made by fossil fuel companies from 1977 forward. No one blinks at the proposition that the Sacklers should have to disgorge the profits from OxyContin to undo the harm it caused.
Why shouldn't the same approach be applied to fossil fuel companies?
At this time, fossil fuel industries pay out to the criminal MAGA president. He will use the powers of POTUS to promote fossil fuel energy. For the simple reason they pay his legal bills and pay for elections of himself and his cronies.
The government should nationalize them, hire more people of the knowledge and integrity of Lina Khan and run them for the greater benefit of the American People!
Regarding the incoming government, I give you Murphy's original quote: "If there are two or more ways to do something and one of those results in disaster, then someone will do it that way."
community - that should be our goal, and community is a mutual recognition that we all survive together -- money might buy short-term panicked security, but in the long run, we either perish as fools together or learn to build community that includes all.
I like this take, but I don't think we've (human beings) progressed to the point of knowing how to build truly inclusive communities yet. Even if the collective bands together to survive climate disaster, I think any type of new community that sprouts up will be more "Animal Farm"-esque - there will be a hierarchy, and those in leadership positions will exploit their power and followers.
I wonder if more people NOW understand W. North Carolina?
The misfortune of finding yourself living where the winds from the Pacific are very weak at the latitude of LA and San Diego, which doesn't bring much moisture onto the land. But hey, they’re quite strong at the latitude of Seattle and Portland, and here, they bring a ton of moisture. Those two parallel bands of rain in W Washington and Oregon and a reasonably dry area between them. Two coastal mountain ranges, each catching rain. Our little valley between the two mountain ranges is protected, warmer, and drier. It becomes more clear why most settlements in our area are in that central valley and not on the coast. Three cheers for the Puget Sound Lowlands: protected from the aggressiveness of the Pacific Ocean, its rains, and winds by the Olympic Mountains and our deep water port, which allows it to trade the hinterland goods with the world.
Good geographic fortune. But no one is naive here, they just fail to take action. When the Strait of Juan de Fuca fault shoots off a full thrust 9.0 mega quake, we’re all screwed. We all know that no one will come to save us.
The worst part is the dry Santa Ana winds coming in from the desert to Southern Cali. I lived there in the 80's and usually, there were about 2-3 weeks of rain... at the end of Jan-Feb which constituted Winter. For a NE'sterner, that seemed like a great deal at the time.
If Biden cared about offshore drilling, he could have banned it at any time during the last four years. Do not conflate spite with actually caring about climate change. And what was Kamala Harris going to "turn the page" on? The last four years of Biden/Harris?
Anyway, 12 or so more long days to find out what other things Biden will do solely to make things difficult for Trump. I remember when taking keys off keyboards was the worst thing the Dems did when transferring power. Not that the actual power ever gets transferred. IMO, etc.
Harris was Vice, she was not in the position to make decisions, determine the flow and direction of policy. Her job was to support the President and break ties in the Senate. I don't know what you actually expect VPs to accomplish. They are basically the insurance policy of the nation's CEO.
Okay, she was basically useless, then. She did say she could not think of a thing she would have changed. She was given the border to figure out, and pretty much did nothing except say "don't come". She was barely coherent. I honestly do not see even one thing that qualified her to be president. Harris even requested that the security briefings for her be stopped. I am certainly not a Trump/Musk fan, not in the least, but the Dems did themselves in, both with the candidate and their record. And spent $1.5 BILLION to lose. At least the Dems can stop whinging about media coverage, though, all of $MSM and the "celebrities" were for her, but looks like folks are past being swayed by that.
For fuck's sake, she wasn't "given the border to figure out". She was put in charge of developmental programs that would, hopefully, eventually, result in fewer people needing to flee Central and South America for the north. I.e. the sort of thing that even in the best case would take a great deal more than four years to have an appreciable effect.
Was she successful at that? I honestly don't know, and I doubt you do either. In any event, the sort of programs she was put in charge of will almost certainly be shitcanned under the incoming administration, and the long-term effort necessary to really make a difference will be hobbled.
Here's the relevant part - people kept streaming over the open borders, kept being flown in. While Harris spent time and money in other countries.
How does that qualify her to be POTUS? In any event, the voters chose. The voters did not choose Harris in the primaries. That should have been a giant clue. All she ran on was being a black woman and paid celebrity endorsements. And she lied about Biden's senility, along with everyone else.
Pretty much all I needed to form an opinion was to see the video of her laughing about putting people in jail because their kids skipped school - not because she cared about the kids, but because that affected school subsidies. She said she loves the money. And chortling about how easy it is to ruin a person's life with a stroke of a pen by arresting them. She lovingly recounted the ways - getting housing, getting a job, etc. Even if the charges were dropped, she giggled, it would be on their record forever. That's POWER, she laughed.
Nope.
I was a Dem all of my life. I am not a Republican now, but I am no longer a Dem. Here is how I regard the Dem government now - the FEMA response to the hurricanes. Passing over any homes that had Trump signage.
Perhaps the Dems should try that Democracy!!!! thing they keep yammering about merely for campaign purposes. Hold an honest primary. Stuff like that. The Dems love to carve out special interest groups, love to be divisive. Well, they got what they wanted, just not in the way they hoped for and spent $1.5 billion on.
I'm gonna stop you with a giant [citation needed] on the FEMA thing. And take everything else you've said with a huge grain of salt as a consequence, as I suspect you may have been taken in by disinformation on that and other subjects.
Do I think the Democrats are perfect? no. Do I think there's currently any realistic alternative if you want to keep Republicans out of power? no. Do I think the latter goal is of fucking existential importance to the US and the world as a whole? I do.
Everything else is secondary, as far as I'm concerned.
Oh, Google is your friend here. FEMA admitted to the Trump thing, there were emails and memos.
Do you think Biden/Harris/Dems left the US and the world a better place? Wars, inflation? Millions of illegal immigrants?
And last but not least - the election is over. I will give you the same advice I was given, as a Bernie supporter, when Bernie was crapped on by the Dems - get over it. If you are testing the waters for Harris in 2028, you might want to back a different horse. The election is over.
Incidentally, her name has come up in my life --quite frequently.... I have read a couple of her novels but I have also seen her referenced in a book I am reading as well as in other places in the last 2 weeks.
It's difficult work, but it has to be done: people need to get this message, and it's going to take the same sort of Herculean effort that conservatives engaged in back in the 1990s. Reach out to more people, until the word "liberal" isn't a swear word any longer. It has to be done.
A sobering take as always, with "the people most opposed to the humane collective path" coming (back) to run(t) the government.
I've been reading Mike Davis's "Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster," which among other things, includes the power of the natural world out there throughout the centuries. Recommended.
There are way more people who are going to get really screwed by these selfish jackasses. I have stoped wondering why so many people allow themselves to be manipulated into voting AGAINST their interests and I now ponder the time table for COLLAPSE and then CHAOS and then the great awakening and ultimately the real shit show. Yes it makes sense to begin rational discussion and planning now. But the pessimist in me says IT JUST WON’T HAPPEN.
In Louisville I've been watching the folks who voted for more of this attempting to drive those big, empty, rear-wheel drive trucks (with the "Friends of Coal" vanity plates if they're really committed) on the snowy, icy residential streets. Generally someone with more common sense (or AWD) has to stop and help dig them out. I want to ask them if they think Trump even knows how to drive a car. And what exactly they think being a friend to coal means.
Y'all might enjoy a novel named _The Ministry For the Future._ In it, billionaires have to "take a haircut" or ELSE! Much of the novel concerns itself with how we could approach dealing with climate change--1) violence targeted at the main villains 2) some outfit going ahead with some kind of geoengineering plan that not everyone thinks is a good approach, 3) working diligently on numerous different projects such as (I can't describe this as the book does) some kind of project to siphon off the ice melt in Antarctica so the glacier doesn't melt further or something like that; stop flying (and HOW do they get people to stop flying? Ask them nicely or crash some planes randomly); ask billionaires to "take a haircut" or ELSE....
We need to go deeper to deal with causality. Humanity has to get off rugged individualism and onto humanitarian concerns as to what runs us. Evolution continues, and ours isn’t about our bodies but about the unseen aspects of our spirit and our soul. We need to move to a new understanding that we are sacred creatures here to serve Earth. Then we will willingly do what serves us best. That’s what my Substack is all about.
We've got to unwind wealth and income disparity and nobody knows how to do it. We can't even stop people from voting to screw themselves, screwing us with them, and while that used to be the practice in backward southern states that we pitied it's gone national. Really, they're voting to screw minorities and undesirables, the definition of which now includes all Democrats, so we've gone backwards.
And they've won. When I say no one knows how to do it, decreasing income and wealth disparity, I mean no one I know of or in the historical precedent knows how to accomplish it without trashing the system and most hurting the people most vulnerable and least responsible for the horrible inequity in the first place. Exactly how the rich wanted it, in other words. They're on their yachts or estates and we're on the hook.
Well said. As someone who lives in LA, I’m troubled by the fact that our local, state and national governments all seem unprepared for this, even though it has been clear for a while that climate change would lead to these kinds of disasters. And of course it’ll get much worse when Trump gets in, I dunno if he’ll approve any aid for California (if any of that winds up being up to him, fortunately some aid has already been approved) since he hates us for being predominantly liberal. On the upside there is a huge amount of generosity and solidarity-people are doing a lot to help each other out. I think most people do respond honorably to disasters. But there is so much work to do to both make climate change less severe and be ready for the future disasters it will cause. It’ll be a long, hard road but there’s nothing to do but unite and do what we can.
As everyone here knows, Exxon knew about global warming in 1977 at least (and if you haven't watched AOC's master-class in committee interviews, you should (It's all of 1minute 23 seconds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGVW9vJ773k).
The thing is, with massive data collections and computers with unimaginable power, we can trace just about every cent made by fossil fuel companies from 1977 forward. No one blinks at the proposition that the Sacklers should have to disgorge the profits from OxyContin to undo the harm it caused.
Why shouldn't the same approach be applied to fossil fuel companies?
At this time, fossil fuel industries pay out to the criminal MAGA president. He will use the powers of POTUS to promote fossil fuel energy. For the simple reason they pay his legal bills and pay for elections of himself and his cronies.
The government should nationalize them, hire more people of the knowledge and integrity of Lina Khan and run them for the greater benefit of the American People!
Regarding the incoming government, I give you Murphy's original quote: "If there are two or more ways to do something and one of those results in disaster, then someone will do it that way."
community - that should be our goal, and community is a mutual recognition that we all survive together -- money might buy short-term panicked security, but in the long run, we either perish as fools together or learn to build community that includes all.
I like this take, but I don't think we've (human beings) progressed to the point of knowing how to build truly inclusive communities yet. Even if the collective bands together to survive climate disaster, I think any type of new community that sprouts up will be more "Animal Farm"-esque - there will be a hierarchy, and those in leadership positions will exploit their power and followers.
I wonder if more people NOW understand W. North Carolina?
The misfortune of finding yourself living where the winds from the Pacific are very weak at the latitude of LA and San Diego, which doesn't bring much moisture onto the land. But hey, they’re quite strong at the latitude of Seattle and Portland, and here, they bring a ton of moisture. Those two parallel bands of rain in W Washington and Oregon and a reasonably dry area between them. Two coastal mountain ranges, each catching rain. Our little valley between the two mountain ranges is protected, warmer, and drier. It becomes more clear why most settlements in our area are in that central valley and not on the coast. Three cheers for the Puget Sound Lowlands: protected from the aggressiveness of the Pacific Ocean, its rains, and winds by the Olympic Mountains and our deep water port, which allows it to trade the hinterland goods with the world.
Good geographic fortune. But no one is naive here, they just fail to take action. When the Strait of Juan de Fuca fault shoots off a full thrust 9.0 mega quake, we’re all screwed. We all know that no one will come to save us.
The worst part is the dry Santa Ana winds coming in from the desert to Southern Cali. I lived there in the 80's and usually, there were about 2-3 weeks of rain... at the end of Jan-Feb which constituted Winter. For a NE'sterner, that seemed like a great deal at the time.
Also highly recommend ‘Fire Weather’, by John Valliant. The fossil fuel industry has turned our residences into bombs.
If Biden cared about offshore drilling, he could have banned it at any time during the last four years. Do not conflate spite with actually caring about climate change. And what was Kamala Harris going to "turn the page" on? The last four years of Biden/Harris?
Anyway, 12 or so more long days to find out what other things Biden will do solely to make things difficult for Trump. I remember when taking keys off keyboards was the worst thing the Dems did when transferring power. Not that the actual power ever gets transferred. IMO, etc.
Harris was Vice, she was not in the position to make decisions, determine the flow and direction of policy. Her job was to support the President and break ties in the Senate. I don't know what you actually expect VPs to accomplish. They are basically the insurance policy of the nation's CEO.
Okay, she was basically useless, then. She did say she could not think of a thing she would have changed. She was given the border to figure out, and pretty much did nothing except say "don't come". She was barely coherent. I honestly do not see even one thing that qualified her to be president. Harris even requested that the security briefings for her be stopped. I am certainly not a Trump/Musk fan, not in the least, but the Dems did themselves in, both with the candidate and their record. And spent $1.5 BILLION to lose. At least the Dems can stop whinging about media coverage, though, all of $MSM and the "celebrities" were for her, but looks like folks are past being swayed by that.
For fuck's sake, she wasn't "given the border to figure out". She was put in charge of developmental programs that would, hopefully, eventually, result in fewer people needing to flee Central and South America for the north. I.e. the sort of thing that even in the best case would take a great deal more than four years to have an appreciable effect.
Was she successful at that? I honestly don't know, and I doubt you do either. In any event, the sort of programs she was put in charge of will almost certainly be shitcanned under the incoming administration, and the long-term effort necessary to really make a difference will be hobbled.
Here's the relevant part - people kept streaming over the open borders, kept being flown in. While Harris spent time and money in other countries.
How does that qualify her to be POTUS? In any event, the voters chose. The voters did not choose Harris in the primaries. That should have been a giant clue. All she ran on was being a black woman and paid celebrity endorsements. And she lied about Biden's senility, along with everyone else.
Pretty much all I needed to form an opinion was to see the video of her laughing about putting people in jail because their kids skipped school - not because she cared about the kids, but because that affected school subsidies. She said she loves the money. And chortling about how easy it is to ruin a person's life with a stroke of a pen by arresting them. She lovingly recounted the ways - getting housing, getting a job, etc. Even if the charges were dropped, she giggled, it would be on their record forever. That's POWER, she laughed.
Nope.
I was a Dem all of my life. I am not a Republican now, but I am no longer a Dem. Here is how I regard the Dem government now - the FEMA response to the hurricanes. Passing over any homes that had Trump signage.
Perhaps the Dems should try that Democracy!!!! thing they keep yammering about merely for campaign purposes. Hold an honest primary. Stuff like that. The Dems love to carve out special interest groups, love to be divisive. Well, they got what they wanted, just not in the way they hoped for and spent $1.5 billion on.
I'm gonna stop you with a giant [citation needed] on the FEMA thing. And take everything else you've said with a huge grain of salt as a consequence, as I suspect you may have been taken in by disinformation on that and other subjects.
Do I think the Democrats are perfect? no. Do I think there's currently any realistic alternative if you want to keep Republicans out of power? no. Do I think the latter goal is of fucking existential importance to the US and the world as a whole? I do.
Everything else is secondary, as far as I'm concerned.
Oh, Google is your friend here. FEMA admitted to the Trump thing, there were emails and memos.
Do you think Biden/Harris/Dems left the US and the world a better place? Wars, inflation? Millions of illegal immigrants?
And last but not least - the election is over. I will give you the same advice I was given, as a Bernie supporter, when Bernie was crapped on by the Dems - get over it. If you are testing the waters for Harris in 2028, you might want to back a different horse. The election is over.
Octavia Butler warned us and we didn't listen
She sure as hell did. Wasn't the motto of the Christianist rightwing government "make america great"?
And ironically, she lived in Altadena.
Incidentally, her name has come up in my life --quite frequently.... I have read a couple of her novels but I have also seen her referenced in a book I am reading as well as in other places in the last 2 weeks.
It's difficult work, but it has to be done: people need to get this message, and it's going to take the same sort of Herculean effort that conservatives engaged in back in the 1990s. Reach out to more people, until the word "liberal" isn't a swear word any longer. It has to be done.
A sobering take as always, with "the people most opposed to the humane collective path" coming (back) to run(t) the government.
I've been reading Mike Davis's "Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster," which among other things, includes the power of the natural world out there throughout the centuries. Recommended.
There are way more people who are going to get really screwed by these selfish jackasses. I have stoped wondering why so many people allow themselves to be manipulated into voting AGAINST their interests and I now ponder the time table for COLLAPSE and then CHAOS and then the great awakening and ultimately the real shit show. Yes it makes sense to begin rational discussion and planning now. But the pessimist in me says IT JUST WON’T HAPPEN.
In Louisville I've been watching the folks who voted for more of this attempting to drive those big, empty, rear-wheel drive trucks (with the "Friends of Coal" vanity plates if they're really committed) on the snowy, icy residential streets. Generally someone with more common sense (or AWD) has to stop and help dig them out. I want to ask them if they think Trump even knows how to drive a car. And what exactly they think being a friend to coal means.
Y'all might enjoy a novel named _The Ministry For the Future._ In it, billionaires have to "take a haircut" or ELSE! Much of the novel concerns itself with how we could approach dealing with climate change--1) violence targeted at the main villains 2) some outfit going ahead with some kind of geoengineering plan that not everyone thinks is a good approach, 3) working diligently on numerous different projects such as (I can't describe this as the book does) some kind of project to siphon off the ice melt in Antarctica so the glacier doesn't melt further or something like that; stop flying (and HOW do they get people to stop flying? Ask them nicely or crash some planes randomly); ask billionaires to "take a haircut" or ELSE....
Great book.
I'm waiting for the drones to start taking down private jets.
Also a book called Deluge, in which LA burns.
We need to go deeper to deal with causality. Humanity has to get off rugged individualism and onto humanitarian concerns as to what runs us. Evolution continues, and ours isn’t about our bodies but about the unseen aspects of our spirit and our soul. We need to move to a new understanding that we are sacred creatures here to serve Earth. Then we will willingly do what serves us best. That’s what my Substack is all about.
A great article and some of the comments but you need to use a better format. Burying your points in endless text is ineffective.
We've got to unwind wealth and income disparity and nobody knows how to do it. We can't even stop people from voting to screw themselves, screwing us with them, and while that used to be the practice in backward southern states that we pitied it's gone national. Really, they're voting to screw minorities and undesirables, the definition of which now includes all Democrats, so we've gone backwards.
And they've won. When I say no one knows how to do it, decreasing income and wealth disparity, I mean no one I know of or in the historical precedent knows how to accomplish it without trashing the system and most hurting the people most vulnerable and least responsible for the horrible inequity in the first place. Exactly how the rich wanted it, in other words. They're on their yachts or estates and we're on the hook.
Well said. As someone who lives in LA, I’m troubled by the fact that our local, state and national governments all seem unprepared for this, even though it has been clear for a while that climate change would lead to these kinds of disasters. And of course it’ll get much worse when Trump gets in, I dunno if he’ll approve any aid for California (if any of that winds up being up to him, fortunately some aid has already been approved) since he hates us for being predominantly liberal. On the upside there is a huge amount of generosity and solidarity-people are doing a lot to help each other out. I think most people do respond honorably to disasters. But there is so much work to do to both make climate change less severe and be ready for the future disasters it will cause. It’ll be a long, hard road but there’s nothing to do but unite and do what we can.