|
We already know that the Republican Party is anti-science. Given a choice between following the data and doing the wrong thing, they will choose the wrong thing every single time. Because their paymasters, the fossil fuel industry, don’t want to pivot to renewable fuels, we are heading to our inevitable demise as the planet heats up. None of this is news in 2020. Something occurred to me recently, however, as I watched the Republican Party embrace every wrong idea possible with respect to the Covid-19 pandemic. We are getting to see the disaster that is the pandemic as a preview of the disaster of global warming, but this will transpire in a year or two, not fifty to one hundered years. Easily 50 years ago, people recognized that pouring CO2 into the atmosphere was going to cause problems with the climate. For decades, we’ve had people who know nothing about the climate claim that global warming is a hoax, a plot to ruin something or other, etc. Now, in 2020, we can clearly see the writing on the wall, and it’s not at all clear if civilization will survive global warming, even if a miracle occurs and the people of Earth get serious about CO2 emissions. The parallel is this: about 5 months ago, people recognized that there was a potential for a pandemic as a highly contagious disease spread through Wuhan province in China. For most of that time, we’ve had people who know nothing about medicine or epidemiology claim that the virus is a hoax, a plot to ruin the economy or hurt Trump or the Chinese Communist Party or whatever. Now, in late April 2020, we can clearly see that the pandemic is real, and that if we’re extremely lucky, we may survive it, only to die when civilization collapses from global warming. We will be able to see, in a year to 18 months, the entire arc of a disaster unfold. It will be a disaster because of the Anti-Science Party. Had qualified people been in charge of the problem (pandemic, global warming), it wouldn’t have risen to the level of “disaster”. Bill Dudley April 24, 2020 New Jersey |