This is a graph from the NOAA Cimate Change website. See the Climate Indicators, an actively ticking measure of many indicators such as total ice shrinkage, sea level rise, etc which you can monitor.
Despite the massive investments of the disinformation conservative movement, a thinking individual – no matter what party, religious orientation or persuasion – cannot easily turn a blind eye to what we are witnessing in nature today. The basic idea is that we are weakening the inherent feedback loops that have kept the biosphere in dynamic balance for at least as long as living creatures have existed on the planet.
What we are witnessing is selective intelligence by a movement of corporations and their investors who deny climate change to be able to continue exploiting the earth’s natural resources unhampered by any state or self-imposed limitations. It is recognized that the Homo sapien has become the dominant species on earth so much so that scientists now label our era as the Anthropocene era.
The conservative think tanks and their investors have created doubt in Americans about the truth of climate change and there is now a chilling silence about it in Congress and in the Presidential debates. In fact if Romney and Ryan are voted into office, we will see unbridled fracking of land, including public lands, to suck out the remaining natural gas deposits to achieve energy independence. Everyone is talking about safe processes for fracking which is laughable. There are also a lot of “safe” processes that led to massive destruction of mountaintops in the Appalachian mountains. Fracking, which releases large amounts of methane – a heat trapping gas many times more powerful than the carbon dioxide molecule – will increase the heating in the atmosphere.
We don’t care. That is the bottom line. The march of capitalism, Big Stick diplomacy, exploitation for profit, and the brainless call for jobs, jobs, jobs at any cost has undermined reason, ethical responsibility, and stewardship of American land, water, air, and food security…at least in the Republican camp and to great extent in the Democratic ranks as well who are silenced for fear of losing votes. All the cries for individualism at all costs and the hatred of government are radically applied as if they were one-or-the-other choices. What ever happened to reason, to discussion and civil debate? That question cannot be heard in the temple.
With the January 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United versus Federal Election Commission corporations, and other organized political groups are able to make unlimited donations to a political campaign as long as they make no direct donations to the candidates. Thus the tsumani of advertisements for candidates that now blanket the airways and television and the internet. The court decided that these contributions do not lead to corruption. People can now contribute to silencing concerns about the environment and no one knows their agenda. Debate is not just tamped but eliminated conveniently. Corruption may be developing a new definition: parading as one thing when you are entirely another. I think we used to call it false representation.
All the previous campaign finance law, which attempted to make the playing field level and prevented special interest influences, granting citizens some space in which to seek their own information on candidates and make their own minds up – was wiped out with the Supreme Court decision. Now our citzenry is force-fed what to think and do. If you decide to not listen, you must literally turn off the radio, TV, and not read print news, and stay off your computer.
Corporations now vote. Welcome to the New America brought to you by the Modern Day Tea Party, deluded into thinking they have any semblance at all to the Boston Tea Party that grew in response to British domination of American economic success. The Tea Party, like the climate deniers, have created doubt and distrust in the government that we have all elected and that we are responsible to monitor. It is not something that others own, it is ours and we have added government where our citizenry have not always exerted justice and generosity. When our character fails as individuals and thus our businesses or public services fail, we look to government for justice measures. These have grown in direct relationship to the level or corruption in our society. The corruption is the collective actions or non-actions of citizens who are not living up the the American creed.
We are now on a stampede toward a cliff and fall into ecological catastrophe. Each of us must remember that we each have equal power to change this direction but, we must get rid of the corporotocracy that America has become.
What’s the best way to get started? Arm yourself with a couple of questions and keep them foremost in your mind: 1) Who is speaking? 2) What do I think about that?
As a teacher once instructed me: STOP WAIT CONSIDER!
That is the starting point. Vote your conscience next. Then dig in and ride your representatives to live up to their responsibilities to us. Pick one area of focus and become an absolute expert and guide others in your circle of influence. After that you’ll know what else you can do.
Money cannot define America and Americans. Right now it does. It has to change if we are to last.
Susan Feathers 