We Came, We Dithered, We Died

“We believe that the damage done to the ocean in the last 20 years is somewhere between 30 per cent and 50 per cent, which is a frightening figure. And this damage carries on at very high speed—to the Indian Ocean, to the Red Sea, to the Mediterranean, to the Atlantic…Everywhere around the world the coral reefs are disappearing at a very great rate, to such an extent we are not sure we will see anything like what we know now.”

Jacques Cousteau wrote these words in 1971, for an New York Times op-ed titled “Our Oceans Are Dying.”

No one listened.

No one cared.

No one did anything. So now, as Cousteau warned us would happen, our oceans are finished.

More than 90% of coral reefs on Earth will be dead in the next 25 years. What if we did…something? No. Reef extinction is irreversible, even if we were to stop emitting greenhouse gases right this second.

96% of all ocean life, fish big and small and everything that swims, will be gone as well. There’s nothing we can do to save them.

The cause is obvious and well-known: rapid and extreme global warming caused by humans, pollution and overhunting. We don’t have to look far to see that the ocean is boiling: at this writing, water temperatures off the Florida Keys have reached 97°. Caribbean waters are normally 82° all year around. The surprise isn’t that 96% of the ocean life is doomed, it’s that 4% may not be.

It will be soon.

Ironically, all this heat is about to start a new Ice Age. A new study concludes that there is a 95% chance that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a system of ocean currents including the Gulf Stream that carry warm water from the tropics into the North Atlantic will collapse between 2025 and 2095 because it is being blocked by cold water dumped into the northern part of the ocean from melting glaciers and ice caps. Without the AMOC, as soon as two years from now and no later than 70, Europe will be buried under sheets of ice, like in the disaster movie “The Day After Tomorrow.”

Bummer. I liked Europe.

Several years ago, flying west from Istanbul to New York, my plane’s pilot announced that he and his colleagues could see that the Gulf Stream was breaking down—and had been for some time. As a result, we’d arrive earlier than scheduled. He explained why this was scary. He urged us to write our Congressmen. I wonder if anyone on board did. I didn’t. What would have been the point? Congress doesn’t care or help or act.

In a natural-disaster movie like “2012” or “Armageddon,” the world’s political and business leaders gather in a blue-lit situation room chock full of computer screens displaying cool infographics, some in business attire, others in exotic garb, all wearing somber holy-crap expressions as the camera pans around. Someone, either the U.N. Secretary General or the U.S. President (these are American movies), calls on nations to drop everything, set aside their differences and dedicate all their resources and attention to the existential crisis of climate change, the worst threat—by far—that humanity has ever faced.

Because this is a film, where politicians are sometimes evil but never total idiots, everyone nods in agreement, rolls up their sleeves and gets to work to save humanity’s ass.

(In the European version of this film, we all die in the end after waging a valiant and noble struggle.)

Actual politics, however, are not as logical or commonsensical as movies. Young people like the activist Greta Thunberg are, quite reasonably, appalled at the mess they’ve inherited thanks to decades of dithering: “Pretty much nothing has been done since the global emissions of CO2 has not reduced,” Thunberg told a 2020 climate conference. “[I]f you see it from that aspect, what has concretely been done, if you see it from a bigger perspective, basically nothing.”

I ask my smart friends why we’re so stupid. “It’s all about money,” they usually say, more or less. “Business and rich individuals profit from the current system.” But that doesn’t make sense. There’ll be no economy if we’re all dead. You can’t enjoy your wealth if you’re dead. Being dead, all of us as a result of environmental catastrophe, is a distinct possibility—for our grandchildren, our children, even for precious Us.

And yet—my smart friends are right. Capitalist idiots are so moronically capitalist that they’d rather be rich and dead than middle class and alive. The rest of us, the non- and anti-capitalist people who neither benefit from ecocide nor approve of it, are letting the greedy lunatics take us with them. We are, precisely because we believed Jacques Cousteau and did nothing to act or to react or to resist, even dumber than they are.

Darwin wins again.

(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.)

DMZ America Podcast #76: Another Shooting, Misinterpreting the Midterms, Should Greta Thunberg Offer Solutions?

Happy Thanksgiving! Ted Rall and Scott Stantis, two of the finest editorial cartoonists in all the land, dig deep into the ongoing rash of mass shootings in America. Is there any cause for hope? They demystify the meaning of the midterms and debate whether an activist has a larger obligation than just pointing out a problem. Should they also offer solutions? 

 

Who Was That Greta Girl Again?

People who comment on Greta Thunberg’s personality, demeanor and looks should instead focus on the fact that she is right that we face an existential environmental crisis.

Left, Center and Right: We’re All in Denial About Climate Change

main article image The political left, center and right do share something in common in today’s polarized America: we’re all in denial. The first step in 12-step programs begins with admitting that you have a problem for a reason: you can’t tackle a challenge whose existence you refuse to acknowledge. “From a psychoanalytical viewpoint, denial is a pathological, ineffective defense mechanism,” doctors M.S. Vos and J.C. de Haes observed in their 2006 study of cancer patients. A stunning 47% of the patients they polled denied that they had cancer! Denial reduced their chances of seeking treatment and then following through.

 “On the other hand,” Vos and de Haes observed, “according to the stress and coping model, denial can be seen as an adaptive strategy to protect against overwhelming events and feelings.” Denial lets you feel better.

 We think of climate change denial as a right-wing phenomenon. Indeed, only 56% of Republicans accept the scientific consensus that the earth is heating up; fewer still believe that humans are responsible, compared to 92% of Democrats who agree with scientists.

 Those who deny that climate change is real are engaging in what psychologists call “simple denial.” But those on the left aren’t much better. Liberals who think global warming is real often resort to “transference denial”: they blame the right and corporate polluters even though we’re all responsible. The scale of the climate crisis and the level of sacrifice and disruption that would be necessary to mitigate it feels overwhelming. A widely-reported analysis predicted that human civilization will collapse in 30 years. Others say it’s already too late to save ourselves.

 “We’re doomed,” predicts Mayer Hillman, a senior fellow emeritus at University of Westminster’s Policy Studies Institute. “The outcome is death, and it’s the end of most life on the planet because we’re so dependent on the burning of fossil fuels. There are no means of reversing the process which is melting the polar ice caps. And very few appear to be prepared to say so.”

  He’s probably right.

 Bernie Sanders recently proposed the most ambitious assault on greenhouse gas emissions ever floated in U.S. politics, a $16.3 trillion plan to transition out of carbon-based fuels by 2050. By that time, though, we’ll be dead.

 As aggressive as Sanders’ plan is, it doesn’t go nearly far enough or fast enough. Yet Republicans and some Democrats say it’s too expensive. No one in corporate media is taking Sanders’ idea seriously. It’s stillborn.

 Liberals post their concern to social media. Some even attend protest marches. But they’re hardly acting like we face an existential crisis.

 The 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg told world leaders: “I don’t want you to be hopeful, I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day and then I want you to act.”

 Panic? Our “leaders” don’t give a crap. They’re too bought and too stupid to act.

 The bird population in the U.S. has collapsed by 29%—a total of 2.9 billion fewer birds—over the last 50 years. During that same period we lost half the world’s fish. Insects are on the way out too. “No insects equals no food, [which] equals no people,” says Dino Martins, an entomologist at Kenya’s Mpala Research Centre.

 None of this should come as a surprise. We were warned. “The oceans are in danger of dying,” Jacques Cousteau said in 1970. Life in the oceans had diminished by 40 percent in the previous 20 years.

 If you really believe that the planet is becoming uninhabitable, if you think you are about to die, you don’t march peacefully through the streets holding signs and chanting slogans begging the corrupt scoundrels who haven’t done a damn thing for decades to wake up and do something. You identify the politicians and corporate leaders who are killing us, you track them down and you use whatever force is necessary to make them stop. Nothing less than regime change stands a chance of doing the job.

 Nothing else—the struggle for income equality, gun control, abortion—matters as much as attacking pollution and climate change.

 Anything short of revolution and the abolition of consumer capitalism is “minimizational denial“: admitting the problem while downplaying its severity. Anything short of a radical retooling of the global political system that establishes state control of the economy with environmental impact as our first, second and third priorities is a waste of time that dooms the human race to extinction.

 There is no middle ground, no splitting the difference, no compromise. “Good enough” isn’t good enough. Mere progress won’t cut it. Human survival is a pass-fail class. The final exam is tomorrow morning—early tomorrow morning.

 Time to get serious, godammit.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Francis: The People’s Pope.” You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

 

css.php