climate crisis | Ted Rall's Rallblog

DMZ America Podcast Ep 167: Megahurricanes and the Climate Crisis

October 14, 2024•

In just two weeks, two huge Category 5 hurricanes slammed into Florida and North Carolina, killing hundreds of people and causing tens of billions of dollars in property damage. The new reality of climate change is that global warming is no longer in the future. It’s here now. The question is: what are we going to do to adjust in order to survive and mitigate the damage?

Two veteran political cartoonists who also happens to be best friends despite having diametrically opposed politics, Ted Rall (Left) and Scott Stantis (Right), focus on the hard decisions America and the world need to be taking going forward. Will some places have to become off-limits? Should insurance companies be allowed to deny coverage to people who live in dangerous place is vulnerable to climate change? What is our responsibility to people affected by these storms?

Watch the Video Version: here.

The Final Countdown – 8/14/23 – Ukrainian Offensive’s Shortcomings Causes ‘Blame Game’

August 14, 2023•

Ted Rall

On this episode of The Final Countdown, hosts Manila Chan and Ted Rall discuss top news, including the Ukrainian offensive’s shortcomings.

Ted Harvey – Political Commentator and Former Colorado State Senator

Mark Sleboda – International Relations and Military Analyst

Dr. Reese Halter – Ecological Stress Physiologist

Esteban Carrillo – Journalist and Editor of The Cradle

The show begins with Political commentator Ted Harvey, who joins The Final Countdown to provide his insight into both Donald Trump’s federal indictment and the Special Counsel appointment for Hunter Biden’s investigation.

In the second half of the first hour, military analyst Mark Sleboda talks to The Final Countdown about the so-called Ukraine counter-offensive shortcomings and the reactions from its Western backers.

The second hour is joined by Dr. Reese Halter, who discusses the ecological tragedy in Hawaii as the death toll rises. He provides his insight into the growing need to confront climate change.

The show finishes with Journalist Esteban Carrillo, who joins The Final Countdown to discuss the latest on the U.S.-brokered talks between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Sometimes What a Van Gogh Needs Is a Splash of Tomato Soup

October 18, 2022•

Ted Rall

Anti-oil environmentalists pour tomato soup on van Gogh 'Sunflowers' painting | Fox News

From The Washington Post: “Just after 11 a.m. on Friday morning, two young climate protesters entered a room in the National Gallery in London containing one of Vincent van Gogh’s most famous paintings: ‘Sunflowers.’ They opened two cans of Heinz tomato soup, flung them on the painting, then glued their hands to the wall.”

Phoebe Plummer of the Just Stop Oil movement, 21, shouted: “What is worth more, art or life?” She continued: “Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet?”

If you didn’t follow this story, you can easily imagine the response of many liberals: this action was stupid. Vincent Van Gogh had nothing to do with global warming. It’s counterproductive. It’s going to turn off people against the environmental movement. Liberals, who claim to care deeply about climate change, similarly deplored the group’s disruption of traffic and sporting events.

“They sure know how to get attention. And while their passion is admirable, their tactics are repugnant,” said Mother Jones magazine editor Michael Mechanic. “All you did was anger the very people you’re trying to appeal to,” tweeted American comic book artist Jamal Igle. “Attacking Van Gogh’s Sunflowers—one of the world’s most loved paintings—will not gain public support, which is what is needed for real change,” said art historian Ruth Millington.

It is largely forgotten that Van Gogh was a populist and a Marxist. Odds are, he would have approved of this attempt to raise awareness of the climate crisis.

There was no damage to the painting, which was protected by a sheet of glass. The incident nevertheless reminded me of the discussion over the 2001 dynamiting of the giant Buddha statues at Bamian, Afghanistan, which prompted global outrage. The Taliban government, which had previously protected the statues, reversed course when a Swedish delegation along with UNESCO traveled to Afghanistan and offered money to buy and preserve the 1400-year-old sandstone relics at a time that the country was reeling under the weight of Western sanctions. Meanwhile, requests for medical and food assistance for living, breathing flesh-and-blood human beings fell on deaf ears.

Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, an adviser to Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar explained, “[Our] scholars told them that instead of spending money on statues, why didn’t they help our children who are dying of malnutrition? They rejected that, saying, ‘This money is only for statues.’” Incensed, the Taliban decided to blow up the Buddhas to express their outrage. “If money is going to statues while children are dying of malnutrition next door, then that makes it harmful, and we destroy it,” Rahmatullah said.

I wouldn’t have detonated the charge to blow up those statues. I’m too much of a history geek. But I saw Rahmatullah’s point. Sometimes the world needs a slap across its face to force it to pay attention.

My first reaction to the Just Stop Oil action was: what good is a painting that no one will be around to see in 50 years?

Then—and that’s where I am now—I thought, good for them. Radically mitigating climate change should be humanity’s top priority. 69% of all animals on earth died between 1970 and 2018. Since 1900, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish species have died 72 times faster than “normal.” Droughts are severe. Storms are getting more violent. This isn’t an emergency. It’s THE emergency.

But international organizations aren’t doing anything, because the politicians who belong to them prioritize profits over the planet. Capitalism rules, so the politicians aren’t doing anything. (Reducing greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030, as Biden promises, is so not going to happen that it’s hardly worth mentioning.) Citizens don’t understand how awful the situation is, or they feel alone in their understanding, so they’re aren’t doing anything.

We aren’t engaged in sustained protest. We aren’t rioting. We aren’t overthrowing our do-nothing governments. We aren’t even voting against politicians who aren’t doing anything. Here in the United States, only the Green Party cares about climate change—and their votes amount to a rounding error. And the media hardly ever talks about it.

Truly, it’s the ultimate madness. The house is on fire, flames all around, and we’re not even calling 911, much less reaching for a bucket of water. We are all going to die, or if we’re old our children will, yet we remain oblivious, passive, resigned, disconnected, alienated, stupid—for no reason. 99.9% of humanity does not own energy stocks and we’re all willing to die for the tiny minority who do.

So what if the Just Stop Oil activists bum out art lovers? If your blood boils over what they did more than it does over what they’re talking about, you’re too dumb to be won over in the first place. Complacency kills; outrage fights complacency.

Pardon the young people who kinda-sort-of desecrate Van Goghs. For they may or may not know what they’re doing but they certainly know what’s important. If we’re all going to die for no good reason, some of us have the right to go out screaming.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

The Only Wasted Vote Is a Vote Not for a Third Party

August 26, 2020•

Ted Rall

What would be the totem animal for a third-party?

Jesus, Ted. All you ever do, some people tell me, is complain. We get it—you hate both the Republicans and the Democrats. We don’t like them either. But those are the only two parties that have a chance of winning an election. Stop telling us what not to do. Tell us what you think we should do instead.

That criticism is fair. If you don’t like something, it stands to reason you think something else is better and you ought to say what it is.

In my defense, people will never build a new political system until the old one is dead to them. Che Guevara said that the masses would not risk the violent upheaval of revolution as long as they still believed the old regime capable of addressing their needs and grievances to any significant degree. Although the elimination of the two-party duopoly in U.S. electoral politics does not necessitate violence, the same inertial principle applies: as long as progressives and other leftists continue to think that they can express their political will through the Democratic Party, they won’t create the space for what comes next.

So job one is to drive a stake through the corpse of the Democratic Party. Much of my work these days is dedicated to my belief that the Democratic Party is where progressivism and liberalism go to die. I am out to convince as many people as possible to get real, dump the Dems and move on. Articulating the platform of a new third-party or revolutionary movement before enough progressives and leftists have given up on the Democrats would put the cart before the horse.

It would also be arrogantly undemocratic. No one person, certainly not a 57-year-old cis white male political cartoonist, can or should write a programme for the future of an entire society. We all have to do that together.

If you’ve been reading my work for a while, you know that I think that nothing short of revolution is adequate to address the radical problems faced by Americans and by humanity, beginning with the climate crisis. The profit imperative of capitalism is inherently corrupting; it hobbles all efforts to move toward a sustainable relationship with the planet. But no one can make revolution. It happens or it doesn’t. What to do in the meantime? Specifically, for us now, what if anything should we do with our vote this November?

The most compelling argument for electing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is harm mitigation, with a view toward preventing a second Donald Trump administration, cleaning up the mess from the last four years and governing better than Trump would have.

I don’t find this argument compelling. History shows that presidents rarely accomplish anything of substance during their second terms. Trump would probably be the same.

Not only did Barack Obama fail to clean up the mess he inherited from George W. Bush, he codified and expanded it: he told CIA torturers not to worry about being prosecuted, he expanded the assassination drone program, he sent more troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, and he continued Bush’s policy of austerity for distressed homeowners and the unemployed with giant cash giveaways to the big banks. Likewise, Bill Clinton didn’t do anything to reverse the Reagan revolution; he went further right than the Republicans dared with “welfare reform,” Joe Biden’s devastating crime bill targeted at minority communities, NAFTA and the WTO. Given Biden’s half-century record of neoliberalism and his refusal to apologize for any of his crimes, it would be ridiculous to assume he would govern as anything other than a Republican.

After you accept the reality that a Biden administration would probably be even worse than keeping Trump, the question becomeas, should one vote and if so for whom?

There is a long and honorable tradition of voter boycotts throughout the world. This is especially true in countries without vibrant functioning democracies, like the United States. (In a European-style parliamentary democracy, most voters can find a party close to their personal ideological alignment. A two-party monopoly cannot possibly serve 330 million people.)

However, there is a relative dearth of data studying the motivations for people who stay home on Election Day. There is a cultural assumption in the U.S. that non-voters are lazy, apathetic or both. So it’s hard to ask intelligent progressives and other people disgusted with the two major parties to sit it out on November 3^rd, knowing that they will be shamed.

Which leaves the third-party option.

There are two relatively notable third-party candidates this year. Clemson University professor Jo Jorgensen is the Libertarian Party nominee for president. On the left, the Green Party standard-bearer is unionist and environmentalist Howie Hawkins.

Given that neither candidate is likely to be elected, the main reasons to cast a vote for Jorgensen, Hawkins or another minor party candidate are to register a protest—I’m not apathetic, look, I vote—and to build an organization for the future. You can’t keep saying every two or four years, I would love to vote for a party other than the Democrats or the Republicans but the other parties are too small unless you actually do something to make one of those other parties bigger. That means voting for them. That means contributing money. Not two years from now, not four years from now, but now.

I have not yet decided whether to vote for Hawkins or someone else. I do know that I won’t be voting Democratic or Republican. I’m against both parties. Both parties kill innocent foreigners with abandon. Both parties neglect the poor. Neither party cares about the planet.

Why should I vote for a party I disagree with on almost every fundamental issue?

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of the biography “Political Suicide: The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party.” You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)