By Thomas Neuburger
It’s hard not to write about climate. After all, this is going on:
That massive spike at the end is August 2024, less than a month ago. The graph is by climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf. Says Leon Simons, who tweeted this graph:
For those in the back: Global warming isn't linear any more! We have to adapt to accelerated warming and climate change.
You and I have known catastrophic warming is no longer linear (see here and here) because you and I care to be informed. Those who get all their news from corporate stiffs, paid to be happily ignorant, are sadly misinformed.
I’ll come back to this. The consequences are worth discussing; also set in stone.
The Israeli Slaughter: A Boy in a Bag
But it’s very hard not to write about war these days, especially the could-be-nuclear war between NATO and Russia (the latest is here).
And very especially the slaughter in Israel/Gaza that the corporate stiffs insist on calling a war. (Tell everyone you know: It’s not a war, it’s a slaughter.) Here’s a taste of recent developments.
How about a man holding the remains of his grandson in a bag? There’s video at the link, but it’s a hard watch.
In related news, there’s this. Note that just 40,000 dead is a vast undercount. Still, 14 pages of murdered newborns is horrific, yet Israeli soldiers wallow in this stuff.
There’s also this from Aljazeera on September 16:
And this from the Independent on September 7:
And much more like it. This is not a war. It’s a slaughter.
The Future
I don’t think this will be stopped, not under Biden or Harris, and not under Trump, until the people of Gaza are so reduced in number — murdered, starved, dead of disease and exhaustion — that they’re easily forced into the sea, or if finally humans decide to act humanely towards them, shipped to foreign lands to live as they can.
Then the developers arrive and Gaza-before-the-slaughter will be restored.
There’s video at the link, but it’s a hard watch. Did someone say “opportunity”? Was it you, Goldman Sachs?
Snark aside, if this doesn’t turn Israel into a pariah nation, marked by this to the end of its climate-tossed days, we’ll know the state of the world: Unredeemed.
Global climate change has NEVER been linear. Resonance is like that. Thomas knows this. Simons evidently does not.
This election arguably requires even more cognitive dissonance than usual. We have to accept an "all of the above" Dem approach on energy policy that does little to ameliorate one of the greatest crises humankind has ever faced. We also have to accept continued Genocide in Gaza.
The alternative is the only way we CAN accept those noxious positions. Trump/GOP would be visibly worse on climate change and on Gaza. They would be horrible on so many other things. They would likely fundamentally alter existing institutions in a way that would be very difficult to undo for decades.
Not an appetizing set of options.