Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Slow Motion Catastrophe

While the world is simultaneously moved by the Olympics and horrified by the overgrown racist Oompa Loompa that the Republican Id has vomited forth, Louisiana is drowning.

They received two feet of rain in about 48 hours.  That's simply mind-boggingly.

Louisiana has now been the victim of two "freak" weather events in 11 years.  For a normal person, this would trigger some sort of alarm bell.  Why are so many freak weather events occurring?  The answer, of course, is that the global climate is warming and weather patterns are changing.  Events like the Louisiana flooding are going to be normal now.  In the end, the migration crises we see from civil war in Syria will be dwarfed by environmental refugees from changing climate.

While most of the world is incredibly concerned about this, only one major political party in the developed world believes this to be a hoax.  Only one.  As a result, the world's #1 (or #2) greenhouse gas emitter is hamstrung by a caucus of willful ignoramuses whose knee jerk antipathy to science and evidence threatens their own constituencies with more floods, more deadly storms.

Every day, we freak out over violent crimes, as the news blares video of yellow police tape and pictures of victims.  (Every summer we spend with our parents is a re-introduction to the horror show of the "news".)  We obsess over violent crime at precisely the moment that violent crime has reached historic lows.

Meanwhile, we are slowly cooking our planet, and Louisiana is drowning in the broth.

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