Of Things To Come...

In Los Angeles, it's a fight for shade in an overheated world between rich and everybody else, but especially the poor.

This literalizes the conjunction of these two overwhelming problems: climate emergency and income emergency, which more often goes by the silly name of income inequality.  The extremely wealthy few have driven up prices (especially housing) while they maintain their wealth with monopolistic control and exploitation (everything from pharmaceuticals to airlines), outright thievery from "privatized/outsourced"public services, and control and exploitation of natural resources, especially fossil fuels.

 All of this makes survival much more difficult for the many.  But it seems the wealthy are betting that their riches will protect them from climate emergency and its effects.  It will, perhaps, for awhile.  But not forever.  In the US they've already abandoned parts of the country.  Soon they will have to abandon entire cities and then entire countries or continents, starting perhaps with Australia.  But sooner or later, they will run out of Earth to abandon, or to hide in.

But some don't care much about the long term future.  They have purchased one political party in order to solidify their ability to exploit fossil fuels regardless of the consequences to others, as long as they keep making money.  Apparently they think this will insulate them, if they think about the future at all.

This brutal exploitation of everyone else creates day by day threats of crisis and ruin, making it very difficult if not impossible for most people to consider the future.  They have to get through the week, the year.

Meanwhile the other party is rising up, at least in the climate fight. Former Democratic presidential candidate and Secretary of State John Kerry has launched a global coalition of powerful people called World War Zero, to press for the need to address the climate crisis.  It is a counterpart to the grassroots organizations such as Extinction Rebellion, and the global student movement.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi spoke to the UN climate conference in Madrid, assuring them of the congressional commitment to address the climate emergency.“Congress’s commitment to action on the climate crisis is iron-clad. This is a matter of public health, of clean air, of clean water, of our children, of the survival of our economies, of the prosperity of the world, of national security, justice and equality. We now must deliver deeper cuts in emissions.”

Though the current White House is the most blatant offender, none of the major countries--including and especially China, which is increasing its coal production at home and elsewhere--has kept its Paris promises.  They incurred the wrath of Lois Young, permanent representative to the UN from Belize, and chair of the Alliance of Small Island Developing States.  She told the conference:

“We are outraged by the dithering and retreat of one of the most culpable polluters from the Paris agreement...“In the midst of a climate emergency, retreat and inaction are tantamount to sanctioning ecocide. They reflect profound failure to honour collective global commitment to protect the most vulnerable.”

Yet the congressional policy of backing the Green Deal--which in its essentials addresses both the Climate Emergency and the Income Emergency--is absent from coverage of presidential campaigns.

These emergencies dwell in a strange world.  One of these pieces in the Guardian about climate catastrophe was accompanied by a sidebar of other stories of the day, including these:

Amazon pulls 'disturbing' Christmas ornaments bearing images of Auschwitz

Ohio bill orders doctors to "reimplant ectopic pregnancy" or "face abortion murder" charges 

Meanwhile we experience the weather getting crazier, the seasons making less sense.  Soon the stats will emerge naming this the hottest (or nearly hottest) year of the hottest decade.  Carbon emissions rose to record levels for the third straight year.  The only bright spot was a reduction in coal emissions, leading to a slight decline in the rate of emissions growth.

And near the poles the ice keeps melting, faster and faster.  All that melting, National Geographic reports, is damaging the ocean current conveyor known "as the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, or AMOC—which in turn regulates temperatures and weather around the world."

"A new report warns that the AMOC is one of nine critical climate systems that greenhouse-gas-fueled warming is actively pushing toward a tipping point. Crossing that threshold in one of these systems could trigger rapid and irreversible changes that drive other systems over the edge—leading to a global tipping cascade with catastrophic consequences for the planet. The analysis, released last week in Nature by an international group of leading climate scientists, says the tipping point risks are greater than most of us realize."

This could happen suddenly and soon.  And suddenly and soon, there would be no place to hide.