[lit-ideas] Climate Change
- From: Andy <mimi.erva@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2011 07:01:00 -0800 (PST)
First some thoughts on Obama. He's a good president, as good as is possible in
today's system. Carter was probably the last truly good president. He told
the country what they needed to hear and he was thrown out. So did Bush I, who
knew that taxes needed to be raised and he was thrown out with the admonition
to read our lips. It's said that Obama surrounded himself with Bush's
advisers, basically. I have to wonder how much he surrounded himself with them
and how much, given the growth of the industry-government union, they
surrounded him with themselves. When Bush II was in the WH, I thought that he
was responsible for the invasion of Iraq. I have since read that he didn't
want the war, but others around him did. So we had a war. (Clinton resisted,
but 9/11 hadn't yet happened.) As the industry-government union has gotten
more and more entrenched (the de facto president under Bush II was Goldman
Sachs' CEO Hank Paulson, if
that doesn't say everything), there's very little any president can do. Even
the Supreme Court are corporate surrogates. Chomsky has said for years that
the American people get to rubber stamp another four years. Christie Whitman
while she was head of EPA said to the effect of, the arm twisting they do is
unimaginable. Corporations rule, including that mouthpiece for corporations,
the NYT (a few bones thrown to the public excepted, like Paul Krugman and
Maureen Sullivan). Something like half or more of what passes as news in news
outlets are press releases from the WH. Americans are brainwashed with what
corporations want them to hear. BTW, corporations donate to both Republican
and Democratic candidates almost equally so their bases are covered no matter
who's elected.
Here's a story from the Guardian on the IEA's (International Energy Agency's)
recent pronouncement that if things don't change now, it will be impossible to
stabilize climate at 2 degrees in five years. It's especially interesting
that the IEA is the one saying this because they've been the cheerleader for
industry. In 2008 they finally admitted that depletion is real. CERA
(Cambridge Energy Research Associates) is still climate denying and depletion
denying. Certainly the oil companies are still hard and fast against climate
change, as is the tea party, perhaps without knowing it, because the Koch
Brothers want to pollute at will, and they are the tea party. Bill Clinton
said that the U.S. is the only developed country that doesn't believe in
climate change, as if it's something to believe in. Even China is beginning to
confront it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/09/fossil-fuel-infrastructure-climate-change
Andy
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