Burning down the future

The Spray Tan Who Would Be King has declared open war on the future.

Not his future, what does he care, he will not live to see the effects of his self-glorifying ineptitude.

And not the future of his apostles and Wormtongue-whisperers, whose gaze does not extend beyond the limits of their personal greeds, hatreds, and schemes, who see the "king" as a means to their warped ends.

Nor that of the bootlickers, acolytes, and court jesters, all of who have long since abandoned any shred of independent thought or self-respect.

No, I mean The Future.

On June 11, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it was changing its name to the Environmental Destruction Agency with the announcement that the agency

is proposing to repeal all “greenhouse gas” emissions standards for the power sector under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act (CAA) and to repeal amendments to the 2024 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) that directly result in coal-fired power plants having to shut down.

That is, it proposes to allow power plants to emit as much climate-destroying greenhouse gases as they feel like, with the argument being (if you can believe it but I bet you can, considering) that because it can't be said with assurance of just how significant an impact on global climate change is driven by US-based fossil-fuel power plants, those emissions can't be regulated at all.¹

 To show the science-based, non-political nature of the change, the announcement quotes EDA Administrator Lee Zeldin as saying the "Biden-era regulations have imposed massive costs" on the poor, beleaguered, barely-getting-by fossil fuel industry and their "primary purpose" was "to destroy industries that didn't align with their narrow-minded climate change zealotry" and to "regulate coal, oil and gas out of existence.”

The reactions from actual environmentalists were not kind.

- The plan is a "reckless betrayal," "ugly and unpatriotic," "cynical," and "dangerous." - Moms Clean Air Force director Dominique Browning

- It's "destructive," "reckless," and "fan[s] the flames of extreme heat and wildfires." - Center for Biological Diversity environmental health attorney Ryan Maher
- It's "completely reprehensible," "trad[es] American lives for campaign dollars," and is "an assault on our health and future." - Sierra Club climate policy director Patrick Drupp
- It's "astoundingly shameful," "galling," "sacrifices the public good," and would leave "no meaningful path to meet global climate goals." - Julie McNamara of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Climate and Energy Program

This announcement came on the same day that The Guardian reported that climate.gov, the highly-respected source of information and education about climate change run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has been effectively shut down.

Every member of the content production staff was fired as of May 31, meaning that other than (maybe) some already-prepared material to go up later this month, there will be no new content, no new reports on studies, no new refutations of denialist bullshit.

Worse, two web developers were kept on, raising the specter that the site may be maintained, but turned into an outlet for fossil-fuel industry propaganda and conspiracist trash.

Oh, and speaking of NOAA, on June 5 the agency and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (at UCal, San Diego) stated, as reported by CommonDreams.org,

the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere peaked above 430 parts per million in 2025 - the highest it has been in millions of years.

In fact, in more than 30 million years, according to Ralph Keeling, director the Scripps CO2 Program, who responded to the study's findings with a typical scientist's understatement: “Another year, another record. It’s sad.”

Sad indeed, but it's more, though. A new study, published June 2 in the journal Communications Earth & Environment says that coastal communities in North Carolina are already experiencing a frequency of high-tide flooding "an order of magnitude greater" than the official numbers. Although the immediate cause was shortcomings in measuring rainfall runoff and the effects of local drainage infrastructure, still, as the Washington Post noted in its coverage, the study

offers insights into a reality that a growing number of coastal communities will face, or already are facing: that infrastructure built for another time and another climate is not equipped to handle the higher tides and persistent flooding fueled by rising seas.

Part of the issue with rising sea levels, of course, is that warming climate yields warming water yields expanding water yields sea level rise. Another and potentially much larger issue is melting ice caps, particularly in Greenland and Antarctica. And according to work also published in Communications Earth & Environment, this one on May 20, the current Paris Climate Agreement target of limiting warming to 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels is too damn high and

even current climate forcing (+1.2°C), if sustained, is likely to generate several meters of sea-level rise over the coming centuries, causing extensive loss and damage to coastal populations and challenging the implementation of adaptation measures

trying to deal with the result of melting of ice sheets. The study concluded that the "safe limit" of warming for ice sheets is not 1.5°C or even 1.2°C but more like 1°C "and maybe a little less," the "safe limit" being defined by study co-author Jonathan Bamber as "one which allows some level of adaptation, rather than catastrophic inland migration and forced migration." Exceed that limit and

it becomes extremely challenging for any kind of adaptation, and you're going to see massive land migration on scales that we've never witnessed in modern civilization,

he said.

And don't just think of the migration. Think of the hunger it will cause. Think of the pain, the suffering, the starvation, it will cause. Think of the wars it will cause from conflicts over land, over water, over resources, over territory, the ethnic wars over "foreign invaders."

That is the world that King Donald in his lust for vengeance and power, that corporate CEOs in their "warmed and well-lighted offices"² with their lust for more! more! more!, that the sniveling party sycophants who would rather see the world burn than have to find a different job, that the worshipful buffoons who think that wearing a red cap is a solution to their shrinking futures, that is the world they would leave to the generations to come, that is the world that we, we, that we will leave to our children, our grandchildren if we are not willing to face what is before us.

Lead author on this study Chris Stokes noted that "we only have to go back to the early 1990s to find a time when the ice sheets looked far healthier" and global warming was within that safe limit.

So let me ask you this: Think of (or do some looking into) the 1990s, the level of conveniences you had than, the standard of living, the available technology. Then ask yourself this: Was that way of life so terrible that you would sacrifice a world to avoid living that way again?

If your answer is yes, then you are a waste of air and I don't think I believe you. If your answer is no, then know that precisely because of the technological advances of those past 35 years we can leave a livable world behind us if - but only if - we are prepared to pay the price (and I mean invest the money, the tax money, because the corporations sure as hell aren't going to do it willingly) and probably do without some tech-y but unnecessary geegaws.

The choice is stark, but there is a clear right one and no it does not involve "starving in the dark" but it will likely involve some sacrifice. I can only hope we're up to it.

 

¹According to the EPA (to the extent it can still be trusted to not downplay the issue, 24% of US greenhouse gas emissions are from electricity production, of which 60% is from burning fossil fuels. That means that 15% of all US greenhouse gas emissions arise from fossil-fuel burning electric power plants. Not what I'd call "not significant."

²"The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices." - C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters