Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:32 pm
In an interview with EcoWatch, Noam Chomsky noted that “On Nov. 8, the most powerful country in world history, which will set its stamp on what comes next, had an election. The outcome placed total control of the government—executive, Congress, the Supreme Court—in the hands of the Republican Party, which has become the most dangerous organization in world history.”
Surely this is hyperbole, many will say. Chomsky admits “The last phrase may seem outlandish, even outrageous. But is it?”
“The facts,” he says, “suggest otherwise. The party is dedicated to racing as rapidly as possible to [the] destruction of organized human life. There is no historical precedent for such a stand.” He asks people to “consider what we have just been witnessing.”
Think about it: awful as Hitler and the Nazi Party were, the German leader did not have the power to destroy all human life even had he wished. Nuclear weapons aside, the Donald Trump and the GOP do. Because, as Chomsky says, the second important event to take place on November 8 was a WMO report that stated that the last five years have been the hottest on record (we have since seen 2016 is on track to be the new hottest year).
He points to what passes for “sensible moderates” like Jeb Bush “who said it’s all uncertain, but we don’t have to do anything because we’re producing more natural gas” (figure that one out if you can) and John Kasich who acknowledged global warming but whose reaction was “we are going to burn [coal] in Ohio and we are not going to apologize for it.”
Chomsky goes on to say,
“The winning candidate, now the president-elect, calls for rapid increase in use of fossil fuels, including coal; dismantling of regulations; rejection of help to developing countries that are seeking to move to sustainable energy; and in general, racing to the cliff as fast as possible.”
So we may be watching the EPA go the way of the dinosaurs with Trump appointing a climate change denier to run his EPA transition team. His energy adviser is an oil executive, and you know where all those regulations – the ones that are keeping the fossil fuel industry in check – are going to go.
“The effects of Republican denialism had already been felt,” says Chomsky. COP21 will not “lead to a verifiable treaty” even as “tens of millions are expected to have to flee from low-lying plains” from rising sea levels in Bangladesh, just one country among many threatened by rising seas.
Trump says no to immigrants. Bangladesh points out that the sea level rise is a product of pollution coming from the United States and other industrialized countries. “Bangladesh’s leading climate scientist” points out that, in justice,
“These migrants should have the right to move to the countries from which all these greenhouse gasses are coming. Millions should be able to go to the United States.”
And Trump is quibbling over a few thousand Syrian refugees. Who, it might be added, are also fleeing an area heavily impacted by Global Warming.
There won’t be much we can do about it for the next four years, as the GOP races the human species toward world-wide catastrophe and extinction. Sarah Palin will get her wish to “drill baby, drill” while those of us who protest these policies will be called anarchists and worse.
Meanwhile, the GOP has managed to divert anger from their corporate masters to the government instead, and Chomsky points out what I have pointed out many times here, that “With all its flaws, the government is, to some extent, under popular influence and control, unlike the corporate sector.”
A defiant Bernie Sanders tweeted an answer from all sane Americans: “Sorry, Mr. Trump. The future of the planet is more important than the short-term profits of the oil, coal and gas industries.”
This is nonsense to Republicans, who, if they reject science, are not about to accept its consequences.
Photo: Screen capture CNN
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