The coming politics of climate change

Ironically for this blog, this will only get a brief note for now.  The latest UN climate change report basically said we have 12 years to avoid complete catastrophe.  This isn't a world-ending apocalypse in which we rove the deserted highways with a shell-less shotgun searching for gasoline, but storms get worse, droughts and floods, food production gets difficult, impacting poorer countries more than us, and so forth.  I suppose living far from a coast has its advantages, too.

We aren't going to do it.  Ain't gonna happen.

Power alternates in this country.  Even when/if Democrats get control of the federal government again, it won't last because power alternates.  Suppose, hypothetically, that Democrats get unified control in 2020, and impose some sort of climate control legislation, limiting greenhouse gas emissions in a restrictive way, keeping in mind what would then be a 10 year horizon.  They'd lose the House, at least, in 2022, and the presidency by 2028, given the "Time for a Change" model of presidential elections.  Whatever gains made would be fragile, and the GOP's position on climate change is never going to change.  More likely is that the GOP holds the White House, and the Democrats don't really have much of a chance until 2024, if then (depending on the damage done to democracy by the party of Trump).  That's six years.  Half way into the 12 year period.  It gets harder with every year we do nothing.

When the largest economy in the world has a major party that denies the concept of climate as anything separate from weather, nothing is going to happen.

Here's some Wednesday music, with an unmutual opinion.  Among George Clinton's bands, Funkadelic was better than Parliament.  Here's the title cut from Maggot Brain.


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