Thursday, July 4, 2013

Annals Of Apocalypse

No one is listening.They can barely hear.

So this sort of thing makes us happy:
Three things worth noting: Most politicians prefer adaptation to mitigation — that is, they’d rather build houses on stilts than reduce emissions; energy independence is in no way synonymous with “clean” energy; and the oft-stated notion that “since gas burns cleaner than coal and oil, we should be moving toward gas” puts us on the highway to hell.

Make no mistake: when it comes to climate change gas isn’t “clean,” because undetermined amounts of methane — a powerful greenhouse gas — leak into the atmosphere from natural gas production.
Our only desire is that some of you are still alive to suffer. Or to be killed by your children when they realize what you've done, or what you allowed to be done. The braising of the planet is one thing for which the more-or-less 1946-1964 cohort (You know who you are!) probably should take the blame.
[I]f you’re an oil executive scarcely being charged for the global damage your industry causes (an effective annual subsidy, says the International Monetary Fund, of nearly $2 trillion, money that would be better spent subsidizing nonpolluting energy sources), responsible to your shareholders and making a fortune, would you start erecting windmills?

Here’s the answer: According to Rolling Stone, just this spring, BP put its $3.1 billion United States wind farm operation up for sale. Last year, ConocoPhillips divested itself of its alternative-energy activities. Shell, with its “Let’s Go” campaign to “broaden the world’s energy mix,” spends less than 2 percent of its expenditures on “alternatives.” Mining oil, gas and coal is making some people rich while braising the planet for all of us. It’s difficult to think ahead, especially with climate change deniers sowing doubt and unfounded fears of unemployment, but we owe quick and decisive action on greenhouse gas reduction not only to ourselves but to billions of people not yet born.* “People give less weight to the future, but that’s a brain bug,” the philosopher Peter Singer told me. “We should have equal concern for everyone wherever and whenever they live.”
Philosopher hippie-dippie Peter Singer
& his young owl-loving friends.
"Give a hoot! Don't pollute!" at 43. "Should" & "oughta" in one hand & crap in the other, then see which piles up sooner. idiot.

(Don't think for a nano-second of clicking for the remainder, it's the usual "if only this or that, we ... also something, then" except they won't ["politicians prefer adaptation to mitigation"] so we can't, ever. Surrender now.)
*No billions not yet born silly; the Rapture's coming! Also, added apocalypticism live from Columbus.

1 comment:

mistah charley, ph.d. said...

i saw the dvd of the the movie 'hannah' with Saoirse Ronan - the 'alternate ending' has hannah narrating that probably the earth's worst day was when the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs hit it - and yet things got better again - this is a hopeful perspective - life will go on even if human life doesn't - as the venerable julian of norwich put it "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well"