Well, that didn’t happen, did it?
Human society is so deeply wedded to capitalism that we seem to be 100% incapable of reversing the collapse of our environment.
The top priority of rich people is to become richer. Actually, it’s their only priority.
There were, of course, a few other things, like the lies about grocery prices, and the end of woke/DEI education and other governmental programs.
Then there are the mass deportations; his people love this.
Of course, it’s impossible to predict the future of climate change, but it’s improbable that this young lady will die of it. The only way affluent white Americans will get killed by the effects of global warming is if they are unlucky enough not to be able to escape the wildfires, hurricanes, floods, etc. that are becoming more extreme as time passes.
Yes, things will soon go from bad to worse for the world’s poor. They will be becoming increasingly subject to disease due to the exponential growth of the populations of infection-causing insects. They will be losing their homes to sea-level rise and running out of food and potable water due to desertification.
But no matter how bad things get for the poor, we relatively wealthy Americans can always move to parts of the world that are well protected from these threats.
Re: the meme here, the precise opposite is true. If you interview the president’s supporters and ask them if they “do research” into Trump’s actions and statements, almost all of them would say, “Of course! That’s why I trust him to Make America Great Again.”
The same can be said for virtually all climate deniers and anti-vaxxers. Of course, it’s research in a fundamentally different sense of the word from what the word used to mean, i.e. reading the peer-reviewed publications of the scientists who study the relevant field. Now it means watching a few YouTube videos put together by crackpots.
There are probably many ways of going about trying to answer this question. I would head for the Freedom House, which “rates people’s access to political rights and civil liberties in 210 countries and territories through its annual Freedom in the World report.”
At the top of the ratings (scale from 1 – 100) is Finland, scoring a perfect 100, followed by Sweden and New Zealand, both at 99.
The United States is tied for 76th, with a score of 83. And given what’s happening here in the U.S., this figure will be taking a plunge, as Freedom House has disdain for authoritarian regimes.
We Boomers grew up at a time when lush green grass lawns and large expanses of concrete were the paradigm for our yards.
Yet many of us today, if we had the chance to do all this over and re-invent home ownership, would opt for something far more eco-friendly, perhaps sprawling vegetable gardens.
Things are moving very quickly at this point.
At this rate, government of, by, and for the people will be extinguished in fairly short order.
My wife and I had our kids in the mid-1990s. Bill Clinton, a sane human being, was the U.S. president, the economy was strong, the USSR had dissolved, the world was largely unaware of global warming, and the times were generally marked with a certain level of reason and rationality. Accordingly, having children made sense at that point in time.
Compare that with today, where Trump and Musk are taking an axe to American democracy and all things decent. The planet is baking, but the world, especially the United States, is doing essentially nothing about it. At this point, it’s understandable if young couples are unwilling to bring children into this world.
I just had the pleasure to meet a young couple from Norway. A couple of interesting elements from our discussion:
1) They live on the southern part of the country, and I told them about the fellow I met recently who lives “about 800 miles north of Oslo; 300 miles above the Arctic Circle, who experiences 67 days of darkness every winter.” (Of course, the summer is the precise opposite; there are people mowing their lawns at 2 AM.)
They mentioned that most of the Norwegians who live in the extreme north bear a distinct resentment towards those in the more hospitable climates. I replied that the same prejudice exists in the United States, where the folks in New England or the Northern Plains think that we Southern Californians are soft, in terms of both physical and moral constitution.
2) Because of a family business interest, they divide their time between Norway and California. Remarkably, they pay about 28% income tax in Norway, and close to 40% in the United States, because of our combination of federal and state taxes. Of course, this isn’t exactly “apples-to-apples,” since they get free education and healthcare in Norway, where they have to come out-of-pocket for these items in the U.S.
They concede, however, that it’s tough to become extremely rich in Norway, because, as a social democracy, they have higher taxes on very large incomes, and, more importantly, a wealth tax. Thus people who have inherited extreme amounts of money, or have made north of a hundred million dollars normally wind up in places like Switzerland.
I replied that taxing the rich is a “thing” here in the U.S., but it’s doomed to failure, as our rich and powerful essentially own our lawmakers. Corruption like this exists nowhere in Scandinavia.
It seems that we Americans are watching our president working hard to destroy as many of our most beloved and important institutions as possible.
Sure, most of these targets are in the realm of public health and safety, education, and the environment. But the Kennedy Center? Who saw that coming?
