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During the final three decades of the 20th Century, the world experienced at most 100 major disasters — both natural and industrial — every year, with annual damages averaging $70 billion. During the most recent two decades, the world has been afflicted with up to 500 major disasters every year. Annual damages have averaged $170 billion — in 2011 and 2017, over $300 billion. The upward trend is expected to continue without interruption.
Remarkably, this mounting crisis is on just about no one’s radar, except the United Nations, whose Office for Disaster Risk Reduction has been screaming the alarm for years. Its most recent annual report on the situation begins with these words:
“Despite commitments to build resilience, tackle climate change and create sustainable development pathways, current societal, political and economic choices are doing the reverse.”
In a world that for decades has been growing increasingly savage, we — the whole planet — are allowing ourselves to become less resilient, are doing nothing significant to avert climate change (which is a major, but not the only, component of this increasing hostility to human life), are not choosing sustainable development over industrial extraction, are not changing ay of the behaviors that are accelerating the onset of this bad new world.
“Societal, political and economic choices” made today invariably choose the comfortable over the necessary, the profitable over the ethical, the quick return over the long, hard game. Our entire infrastructure is reaching the end of its useful life and no significant investments are being made to repair it, let alone replace it. Even if they were brand new, roads and bridges and buildings built to the specifications of a far gentler world a half century ago are melting, buckling, sinking and collapsing in today’s harsh temperatures and raging storms.
We are like people living in a burning house, refusing to turn off the TV, popping the cap off another beer, slapping a steak on the grill. waiting for somebody to do something. Telling each other we don’t really believe in fire.
Perhaps this madness has been induced by our unacknowledged understanding of the gravity of this situation and the utter inadequacy of our response. Maybe, at some level, we all get it, but dare not even think it to ourselves. Maybe everybody goes a little crazy toward the end.
Good metaphor.
The only committed people seem to be obsessed either with Q-Anon or with gender neutral pronouns. The rest seem indifferent. I don’t think that there’s much room for realism here.
‘Student’ has a point. But I’d like to add one more group to the list – Evangelical Christians: primarily, Pentecostals, Southern Baptists, and independent Protestant congregations meeting in every type of venue from ramshackle storefronts to gleaming modern mega-churches. These born-againers believe that the difficult circumstances we all face are evidence of the End Times prophesized in the Bible, and they glory in the idea that soon they will be Raptured into Heaven along with the “dead in Christ”, leaving the rest of us behind to muddle through the seven-year Tribulation as best we can.
Jimmy Evans – a prominent eschatologist featured on the Day Star Christian television network – states that there are some half-a-billion true believers who will qualify for the Rapture when that momentous day arrives. This accounts for only about 15% of the world population. Apparently, God is picky, picky, picky!
Crazy doesn’t even begin to describe our country. This is the new head of the Department of Homeland Security Misinformation Governance Board (the Ministry of Truth doesn’t sound even a teensy bit insidious in comparison).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZTiMPt-Jqk
Ms. Jankowicz sings the censorship ditty with great energy, I’ll give her that.
You know Tom, there is a theory that is starting take hold among most, if not all of the geo-political “crowd” that I’ve followed over the years; a couple dozen or so disparate folk, Michael Hudson, Pepe Escobar, Moon of Alabama, the Saker, Yves Smith, you (on your good days ;), to name a few; that the strategy now of the US and the EU is to drive the car at full speed into a wall … and see what happens.
Although it will probably result in death, it is not necessarily a suicide run. It could turn out to be a reset. One never knows.
And that’s it. That’s the theory gaining traction among some of the best thinkers on this planet, because it seems to be the only rational explanation for what’s going on.
John Kirby, Pentagon Press Secretary and a former Rear Admiral of the United States Navy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32JQILY2jVg
It’s like you have to have an advanced degree in thespianism* to make it these days under the bright lights of the Beltway Complex .
How many vids have I seen of one our drones taking a taking out a single individual with a 500 pounder. A lot. Groups of twos, threes and fours. Dozens. What identified the targets as the enemy? Well, sometimes they were digging near the side of a road, see ya, but mostly they were walking through a field with an AK-47, in a country, Afghanistan, that has some very loose gun laws.
Hugh Thompson was an American hero.
https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/my-lai-massacre-1#:~:text=Hugh%20Thompson%2C%20the%20helicopter%20pilot,30th%20anniversary%20of%20the%20massacre.
How many Americans have heard of him? Less than 0.5% of our population I would imagine, and I’m also fairly certain half of that figure believe Major Thompson committed an act of treason that day. He should have a statue on the National Mall in Washington, instead he was reviled in life and forgotten in death.
Why is Julian Assange odds on favorite to be executed? Two reasons, one, he was too good of a journalist and revealed too many truths, WikiLeaks proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the rot that has taken hold of our government exists at the level of it’s DNA, and two, in the most famous Wiki leak, the gun cameras and recordings on the Apache made it clear that both the crew and call-in were desperate to slaughter 12 helpless civilians, and when that task was almost done, there was near panic in the gunship that they not be given the green light in time to kill the two good samaritians who had stopped to help the lone survivor.
In what single action in our country’s military history were the most Medals of Honor awared? 20 went to the 7th Cavalry, for their “brave actions” battling mostly women and children at Wounded Knee Creek.
The last refuge of a scoundrel isn’t patriotism, it’s hyprocisy.
And when hyprocisy become becomes not only the preferred policy, but practically the only policy of our leadership can put forward, what is that other than a form of total national madness.
*Cleary, Ret. Admiral Kirby has never been to acting school, wereas Nina Jankowicz has a career on Broadway methinks, should she fail as our chief Disinformation Czar.
QUOTE:***We are like people living in a burning house, refusing to turn off the TV, popping the cap off another beer, slapping a steak on the grill. waiting for somebody to do something. Telling each other we don’t really believe in fire.***
Going by this analogy, I’m a person in this house who (1) sees clearly what’s going to happen if we continue doing what those in the above quote are doing; (2) tried in vain warning some of them (a couple of Singapore’s members of parliament); (3) can find no exit; and (4) am therefore now basically resigned to enjoying what little time I have left before being engulfed by the inferno.
I am going to just throw this out there it is a particular pet peeve of mine and it is this ,there are people who think humanity can just crap up our planet then move to mars ,quickly Terra-form the old red planet and settle back to a new planetary paradise…is it just me or would it be more cost effective to just save the planet that already has an atmosphere and running water,maybe I am just a worry wort and should just chill, anyway thats my two cents to this marvelous blog.
I agree strongly with your comment, what does it say about our species that some portion of us want to just “move on to a new planet” after having extracted whatever could be taken from this one.
It’s the idea of a new, unspoiled frontier maybe that appeals to us but I have trouble with the number of adults who think that we are anywhere near this kind of thing anyway, or that they would even be considered for a seat next to Elon.