Category Archives: Climate

Florida Agonistes

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A neighborhood in Port Charlotte, Florida, after Hurricane Ian visited.

The brutal advance of global climate change is beginning to pop the seams of civilization in myriad places. The cumulative effects of supercharged storms, failing agriculture, rising seas, vicious heatwaves and rampant wildfires have gone beyond the destruction of individual lives and small communities, and have begun to apply unbearable strain on industries and institutions. Perhaps none more than the insurance industry, especially in the state that is in many respects ground zero for climate change’s worst hits — Florida.  Continue reading →

The UN Secretary-General Gets It. Anybody Listening?

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Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, spoke to the UN General Assembly on September 20. As you can see, his hair was completely on fire.

I couldn’t have said it better, so I won’t try. The following is from the official UN summary of his remarks:

“A cost-of-living crisis is raging.  Trust is crumbling.  Inequalities are exploding.  Our planet is burning.  People are hurting…  We have a duty to act.  And yet we are gridlocked in colossal global dysfunction,” [Secretary-General Guterres]  stressed.  Citing the war in Ukraine, the multiplication of conflicts around the globe, the climate emergency and biodiversity loss, and developing countries’ dire financial situation, he warned that despite new technologies there is a forest of red flags.  Social media platforms based on a business model that monetizes outrage, anger and negativity are causing untold damage to communities and societies. Continue reading →

Lemmings on Parade (cont’d)

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We now know that lemmings are too smart to stampede off a cliff to get their population down. But humans aren’t.

Just about the entire population of this country, and those of many others, are sleep-walking toward their own destruction without objection and without any particular effort to avoid it. Sleepily, these folks will agree if asked that something should probably be done, but when that something means that they will be adversely affected in the short term, they lash out. They can be shown beyond the shadow of a doubt that the world will soon run out of cheap petroleum; but when gas prices go up, governments fall. Continue the march.

About 10% of the adult population is ready and willing to run amok in the streets, brandishing guns and hyperventilating about “civil war,” because an idiot lost an election and can’t accept it. Nowhere near that number of people would even consider making a fuss about the approach of a self-engineered doomsday. It has reached the point that thoroughly panicked climate scientists are now publicly advocating civil disobedience.  Continue reading →

Afraid? So What?

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There has been a profound change lately in the nature of my conversations with younger people. (These days, 99.9% of the people I talk with are younger, but never mind.) Admittedly I don’t talk to many people at all, so this is hardly a valid sample. Still, I am struck by a new emotion that frequently appears these days when young people talk about the future: fear.

Fifteen years or so ago, at a social gathering, a lovely young woman I had just met asked me what I was working on. I told her I was writing a book (Brace for Impact) whose thesis was that industrial civilization was in the process of an inevitable and irreversible collapse. “Oh,” she said, “is this where I bat my eyes, smile brightly, and edge away?” I assured her it was not necessary, that I could converse on other subjects.  Continue reading →

Taking “Baby Steps” Toward Catastrophe

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A map showing world temperatures last July.

Senator Joe Manchin has graciously allowed the federal government to send several gallons of water to fight the wildfires raging in 15 or so states: some empty pails to Florida to bail out the sea water that threatens to overwash the state; a couple of kayaks to ride out hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico; and billions and billions of dollars to the rich and famous who make (and buy) electric cars and build wind and solar “farms.” Now he’s taking a victory lap as a savior of mankind. Continue reading →

Another Winning Season

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Everything is going really well, considering….

Just past half-time in the great game of 2022, the 50th consecutive successful year of the War on Climate Change. And as in every one of those other years, we have racked up many achievements so far this year — so many that we thought it best to review them at half time lest the list be too long and unwieldy at year’s end. So far this year;

  • Last weekend, in two days, the heat wave in Greenland melted eight billion tons per day of water from the northern ice sheets and sent it coursing in great rivers into the ocean — enough water to cover the state of West Virginia to a depth of one foot. 

Continue reading →

It’s My Narrative and I’m NOT Sticking To It

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Like tiny rivulets of meltwater trickling off March snowbanks, small but growing narratives are beginning to flow against the tides of the opinions that have dominated the talking heads and writing hands for many months. Contrarians are popping up in more and more places to say, wait a minute! Stop clutching your pearls and gnashing your teeth, things are not quite as bad as we thought. Continue reading →

Gaslighting the Gas Prices

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Every talking head in the MSM universe and on social media is fulminating about rising gas prices and falling petroleum supplies. Everyone has a favorite cause to invoke and a favorite person to blame. Everyone has a solution: ramp up American production, cut a deal with Argentina, ramp up OPEC production, ramp up renewable energy sources. Ramp up something, and do it fast so I can keep my eight-cylinder pickup truck topped up. Not one word about the silver lining this black cloud is offering us — a chance to survive as a species.

Instead of ramping up, relaxing environmental controls and breaking the budget to make sure no one has to change their way of life, we should embrace this fundamental change in the petroleum economy. Accept it. Address it by reducing our consumption of petroleum. Forego the gas-guzzling pickup truck and buy a hybrid. Take the bus. Continue reading →

Cuba Should be Libre

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El Malecon in Havana, on Cuba’s north coast.

It may well be the best-governed country in the world. It has won worldwide acclaim for handling the COVID pandemic better than any other country with the exception of the United Arab Emirates. It is doing more for its people and its infrastructure to prepare for the ravages of climate change, and has done so over a longer period of time, than any other country. Health care is not only free, it is readily available froom clinics located in virtually every rural village. It has been widely regarded for many years, by any number of international studies, to be as the most sustainable country in the world.

Yes. Cuba.

I hear your hiss of outraged denial. I see you making the sign of the cross and retreating into a corner to assume the fetal position and whimper, “But they’re Communists. We hate them!” Both of those things are true, or have been true since the revolution of 1959. And neither of these things matters — except for the fact that they are used as excuses for the U.S. maintaining brutal embargoes and sanctions on the entire country. Despite those shackles, here is what Cuba has accomplished recently: Continue reading →

Climate Mission Accomplished, 2021

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It’s been another great year in the war on climate change. With a combination of forceful inaction, concentrated inattention, strenuous ignorance of facts, strategic amnesia and just plain orneriness we have once again succeeded in not losing to this implacable enemy which, in our humble opinion, does not really exist. Consider this year’s milestones in our epic non-struggle: Continue reading →