Days of the Dead.
California is once again under lockdown as, in the Bay Area alone, an area that surpasses the entire geographical footprint of the State of Massachusetts, and includes 7 counties, has less than 15% of its hospital ICU beds available as the completely predictable surge of the COrona virus takes place. There's less than 300 ICU beds for a population of more than 7 million people, in a country that throws away the lion's share of its economic output for the maintenance and manufacture of a nuclear arsenal that just lays around for no other reason than to threaten the entire globe (none more so than the citizens of the country in which it is housed), backed by an ever-growing "conventional" arsenal of Warships, drones, nuclear submarines, frigates, bombers, tanks, hum-vees, depleted uranium missiles and phosphorous cluster bombs, napalm, fighter jets, and the aircraft carriers needed to transport them, ongoing wars for nobody-knows-what in Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen, and the more than 1000 military installations around the world. But in preparation for a pandemic, a threat that actually exists instead of being merely the bugaboo that haunts the feverish nightmares of NeoCon reactionaries, that arrived on our shores close to a year ago now, not a single extra ICU bed has been added to one of the most populous and richest regions in one of the most prosperous and richest States of our Union (What, San Jose can you see? ICU), despite being in full knowledge that, given the mountebank running the place, this amount of viral penetration into the community was accurately forecast.
But as the deafening silence from the mass media on the Republican refusal to accept the results of the Presidential election, while simultaneously accepting the results of their own victories that were attained during that very same election, I have not heard once that the man they are listening to as he calls the election a fraud, called not only climate change, but the current pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousand of US citizens and infected millions worldwide, a hoax. Yet far from reciting GW Bush's infamous flubbed sentiment of "Fool me once ...", etc, nary a reminder has been issued that the same sources, (such as the laughable "Epoch Times") including our rotund Furor, that are calling the Biden win a hoax are the same ones that are (still) calling a raging pandemic and a catastrophic change in the climate regime that has ruled the biosphere since man stepped out of caves, "hoaxes".
So perhaps you can see why I found the rosy optimism from Grist following the UN's Climate Report, a bit confusing.
Yes, Hallelujah!
Not that the future will be easy, since the three largest contributors to global warming – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide – all reached new heights in 2020, the same year that every Western Governments' economy is experiencing wrenching deflation and collapse in manufacturing ... but no worries: “Emissions are 62 percent higher now than when international climate negotiations began in 1990.”
So the world has shown it is capable of restraint? ... somehow? ...
Albert Einstein is infamously claimed to have stated that, "The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest”, the reason being that, whether it's true or not, (which is irrelevant because it is what happens on earth, not in the universe, that matters during any one lifetime) its basic tenet is sound: it can make or break you, depending on whether it's compounded on that student loan your never going to be able to pay off (precisely because of compound interest, since you have to PAY it), or whether you at one time, had that loan amount deposited in a savings account that paid you interest of 5.00%, which amount is added to your total upon which the next period's interest will be calculated from. Hence, the first increase on a deposit of a hundred bucks would be $105.00, whereas the next payment would be calculated using that new figure, so isn't $110.00, as most people would expect, but, because the base amount is no longer $100, but $105, it would, instead of earning $5, earn $5.25, so your total would now = $110.25. Small pickings indeed, but over a long enough period, it is the compounding that boosts its growth to such an extent as to elicit Einstein's observation.
The load of CO2 follows that same dynamic. Which is why it's emissions are 62 percent higher now than in the 90's: just like compound interest, the percentage increase each year, which is on the upswing, such that it is akin to your interest rate on those savings receiving a higher interest rate each year on top of the increase on the compounded amount, which is of course, compounded on top of what existed the year before, which has already been compounded on what was accumulated the year before that. The only reason I'm able to still function, and thereby write this, is that nature, much like a saver who takes out some of the earned interest every year, but never touches the principle, draws down the CO2 in the atmosphere during the northern hemisphere's spring and summer months ... or at least it used to ... now Nature has started adding as much CO2 as an industrialized country, as the Arctic and other regions such as the Amazon, Indonesia, and the boreal Northwest, not only lose their own ability to generate oxygen, and take-up CO2, but also begin to add their own CO2 output from raging fires and melting permafrost, all of which are rich in CO2 content.
The Grist article then goes on to state that,
"According to another report released by the U.N. Environment Program and its partners, eight of the largest producers of fossil fuels (including the United States, Australia, India, and China) are planning to increase their production of coal, oil, and gas by 2 percent annually (Not to mention Russia, Brazil, Guyana, and OPEC, which all now intend to increase theirs by even more than the large economies). That’s despite the fact that fossil fuel production needs to fall by 6 percent per year over the next decade to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius". (my parens)
Did you take Note that the 2% annual increase acts much the same as compound interest? The first year's increased production figure is now added to the base production figure used to calculate the next year's 2% increase, which results in every year's amount of coal, oil and gas being, by the end of, say, ten years' time, far greater than the amount the first year's 2% was calculated on.
So "if they follow through on their energy plans (and there's no reason why they wouldn't) we can kiss the 1.5-degree goal goodbye."
That's not in reality an "If", it should have read, "Since they will". Which is why the article left me in such a quandary. Because their very next statement is,
"The situation isn’t hopeless" ... (What, you could be dead before it gets really bad?).
"Countries just need to start backing their promises with action ... "
Really? Which countries? If (Lol, there's that "If" again, when it really means since") the largest most powerful countries in the world continue to base their economies on the production, marketing and combustion of fossil fuels, what good does it do if Nicaragua, for example, backs its promises with action? That's a rhetorical question, of course, as I assume you know the answer: None. It makes not a jot of difference).
"... before the next major climate meeting in Glasgow a year from now, every tenth of a degree of warming matters,” he said. (Really? To whom?).
"... concerted SDG (Sustainable Development Goals ... Lol) interventions suggested by the study combine behavioral changes through nudges for both governments and citizens, such as improved effectiveness and efficiency in governance and changes in consumption patterns of food, energy and water." ...
So let's get this straight. In a world where a pandemic is ravaging the entire globe, sending hundreds of thousands to an early grave, yet mandates, health advisories and pleas to wear masks to protect the lives of their fellow citizens not only go unheeded, but result in violence being threatened and then perpetrated on those making the pleas, you somehow believe that a "nudge" to change behaviors in a far more drastic and permanent basis can be induced onto a polity that has every intention of maintaining that climate change is hoax? From what realm of the universe is that conclusion derived?
It is now a year since the corona virus reared its spiked head in Wuhan, yet almost a full half of the US citizenry still believes it's a hoax, for no more reason than that they don't like the prospect of wearing a piece of fabric in front of their nose and mouth, and yet you somehow believe that this same group of discontented MAGAts is going to be "nudged" into changing their consumption patterns (whatever that means) of things as basic to their lifestyle as food, water, and energy? Are you insane?
But let's for a moment assume that they would. What is the biggest change being suggested? In terms of impacts on their everyday lives and purchases, I would posit that the least onerous would be the switch, if it were in actuality possible, which it most certainly is not, from ICE machines to EV's. But like making fuel for rich countries from food crops grown in starving ones, switching to EV's sounds like a solution when it is in fact a continuation, compounding, and exacerbation of the very problem it's purported to solve. All while just coincidentally pouring huge profits into the coffers of a few MNC's.
There are more than a billion autos on the roads of the world's highways (all of which are made from highly-CO2-intensive asphalt, or worse, concrete, for which absolutely NO alternative has ever been suggested), each of which would need to be replaced with yet another billon EV's, and more, since mass transit has been jettisoned by the virus as effectively as when GM and it's co-conspirators destroyed LA's transit system in the fifties to increase their profits. Which is the entire thrust of EV manufacture ... that they are less polluting at the source is beyond argument. If everyone were driving an EV today, urban pollution from autos would be a thing of the past. But it isn't urban pollution that the "electric solution" is touted as solving (that's so old school ... as Covid has demonstrated, the health of society takes a backseat to keeping the economic engine stoked to keep pouring cash into the bank accounts of the Keptocracy ... everything else is secondary, including mass deaths), it is the production of CO2, which, completely analogous to the ethanol-from-corn imbroglio, is a case of cherry-picking the data to get the numbers you want and ignoring the true costs, a method of deception the Cowboy Capitalism of the US excels at, its accounting system would collapse otherwise.
If there is one thing that the Covid pandemic has illustrated, it is that the Capitalist structure of the world's economies doesn't need a War to make it a killing machine. It cares not about the spread of a virus, in fact it caused it. Before there was any virus, the vast majority of activities engaged in by the richest constituents of the world's population, that cohort that causes 80% of the CO2 accumulation in the troposphere, despite their being non-essential, are deadly to the rest of humanity and other beings who share the planet with us (although the rest of humanity seems hellbent on copying exactly those activities. When China decided to get "rich", they had no intention of doing so in a Chinese manner, but slavishly copied the West. They are now poisoning their own citizens and environment far more egregiously than any Western "post-industrial" economy is. Now, however, the West is slavishly copying the Chinese. Last March, Muyuan Foods, fuelled by huge profits at corporate producers after African swine fever ravaged the country’s herds and sent pig prices soaring, are replacing small, traditional farms, many of which were wiped out by the worst animal disease outbreak in history. Muyuan’s profits grew 1,413% in the first nine months of 2020. Amazon and other US companies are now using our own pandemic to replace small traditional stores of all kinds throughout the US economy ... boasting similar obscene profits of their own).
If jetting off to Climate Change conferences in Glasgow means tons of CO2 have to be exhausted into the atmosphere, "who are you to tell me I can't jet off if I want to?", seems to be the prevailing attitude. The pleas from the CDC for Americans to stay at home for Thanksgiving, and the simultaneous lining up of jets on the nation's runways to enable them to do exactly the opposite, says it all: the swine flew. Whereas one glimpse of the lines in the airports speaks even louder: no social distancing, no masks in many of the airports I saw pictured, and no restrictions to your right to fly.
This is not a population that you're going to "nudge" into changing their consumption patterns, least of all while their most favorite furore, echoed by his Republican sycophants and the "Right to Life" murder machine called Evangelical "religion", still insists that the reason for doing so is but a hoax.
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