Industrial plant, Longview, Washington. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
One can be excused for worrying over what tomorrow might bring as expanded battle lines are redrawn across the globe, the world’s wealthiest nation ever consumes itself in a cataclysm of partisan hate amid a growing digital reformation, and unchecked carbon emissions continue to cause more environmental disaster by the day. Will nuclear conflict, machine control, or climate breakdown ultimately destroy our pale blue dot of a planet or is it all just more apocalyptic blather that never comes to pass?
Not everyone agrees, aided and abetted by well-connected nay-sayers who stifle dissent and push disinformation to keep the status quo – business as usual, damn the consequences. Indeed, one has only to realize that the harbingers of doom all have the same goal – money. War keeps the arms dealers in business, tech-driven division stops us asking about corporate control, and fossil fuels reap untold riches in a protected petroleum economy as the earth grows warmer every year.
Veracity is irrelevant if enough people believe. A 2021 University of New Hampshire survey, found that only 83% of Americans believe the earth revolves around the sun, 64% in anthropomorphic climate change, and 58% in human evolution, while a 2022 Pew survey showed that 39% (45% Republicans) believe we are actually living in the end times. Some even want to witness Armageddon in their own lifetime, hoping conflict in the biblical lands of Abraham, David, and Jesus will achieve their triumphant end. Comforted by the promise of more in another life, such fantasy grows with the body count across the Middle East. The UN secretary-general António Guterres has even called the situation in Gaza “apocalyptic.”
The United States and Russia also control 12,000 nuclear warheads as they move closer to each other’s red lines in war-ravaged Ukraine, a more likely path to world destruction. Citing Russia’s 7 to 8% of GDP on defence spending, former Dutch prime minister and new NATO head, Mark Rutte, called on member countries to spend over 2% of GDP on defence, stating that NATO should “shift to a wartime mindset” and redirect money from “pensions, health, and social security.” Increased confrontation with China also threatens future warfare. Pushing the world closer to the edge, the atomic doomsday clock reads 23:58:30.
As noted by statesmen and scientist Benjamin Franklin, “There never was a good war or a bad peace,” but rather than strengthening security via renewed diplomacy, militarism invites more danger as a thoroughly modern nuclear Armageddon ticks closer, started by nervous battlefield belligerents, a software glitch, or a Slim Pickens crazy. Some have even called for the nuclear briefcase to be restricted in case anyone wants to tempt the fates. Truth is what you make it, whether a long-sought requirement for entrance into the next world for the faithful or a symbolic end via the unthinkable for others.
Thought to be written by St John the Divine circa 95 AD in a fit of anarchic allegory on the Aegean island of Patmos,the Book of Revelation oddly holds sway two millennia on, despite its long-expired prediction of “things which must shortly come to pass,” a mish-mash of convoluted messaging, and scattershot renderings of apocalyptic prophecy, including the end in a final battle between good and evil at a place called Armageddon. How we arrive at that fateful end is unknown, while none of us – the religious or the scientific – know the hour. Clearly, St John did not know of nuclear war when he wrote Revelation, but metaphor and myth can be just as dangerous. There will be no blaring of trumpets or angel calls.
A biblical Armageddon seems crazy enough, yet the UNH survey found that many Americans either believe in or are unsure of demonstrable fictions: 19% flat earth, 25% the earth is not billions of years old, 28% microchip implant vaccinations, and 29% no NASA moon landing (more for Millennials and Trump supporters). The earth age is a bit misleading, because one may know the world wasn’t made in seven days as written in the Bible, although not the measured value of 4.5 billion years via uranium radiometric dating.
Nonetheless, a significant percentage still believe the world is only 6,000 years old, thanks to the oddest biblical accounting in the 16th century by Bishop Ussher, who worked backwards from the begats in Matthew to calculate that creation began at “night fall preceding October 23, 4004 BC,” a very precise yet completely erroneous date. Seven of ten Americans also believe in astrology (83% Millennials, Harris, 2024), suggesting many seek to connect to a force beyond themselves, yet don’t know how. We may not survive a seventh millennium.
Nor can we easily disregard the interpretation of those who believe these are the end days. As in the past, meaning is ripe for the picking. In John’s eschatological vision, seven is especially important (7 spirits, 7 angels, a lamb with the book of 7 seals, a 7-headed dragon) as are other ominous numerical baddies (4 horsemen, 4 beasts with 6 wings), including the second beast adorned with the infamous “666” mark. Some believe seven is perfection and thus six is one less. A presumed candidate in the first century was Nero, who fiddled as Rome burned. Emperors are often the fall guy when things go wrong and empires crumble.
Although the end didn’t come then, conjecture remains. The Great Fire of London in 1666 brimmed with deadly potential as did the millennium bug of 2000, although the text clearly states 666 is “the number of a man.” With six letters in their names, Martin Luther, Adolph Hitler, and Joseph Stalin were all labelled as possible world-ending baddies. Ditto Albert Einstein (father of the bomb), Saddam Hussein (from “fallen Babylon”), and Ronald Wilson Reagan (“Star Wars” defence system).
The hunt continues as Donald Trump returns to power, seated atop the US government, a second-coming if one wants to sound the alarm. If you do the math, via a simple substitution cipher (A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, …), it turns out “Antichrist is Donald John Trump” equals 333, which multiplied by 2 for his second administration equals 666. Scary stuff, but anyone can make up a cypher or quote scripture to see what they want in a Rorschach rendering of the future. Nor has cryptocurrency stopped us from buying or selling without the mark of the beast carved into our arms or foreheads – yet. Barcodes and microchip implants via forced vaccines have also been hailed as signs amid worry over world government and no borders.
One can scare thyself silly about the possible meanings: Joseph and Benjamin led the last of the twelve tribes of Israel (Biden and Netanyahu?), warriors patrol territory by the Euphrates River that flows through the battlefields of Syria and Iraq, while the United States is home to thousands of flying eagles (albeit now an endangered species). A crown of 12 stars, virgin-male followers, dragon-female fights all feature – will Wales battle the European Union?
Who cares if the text is gibberish as noted by Thomas Jefferson: “The ravings of a maniac, no more worthy, nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams.” In Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola reimagined Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness into a metaphor for human suffering and horror amid endless war, run by soulless administrators with barbaric goals, his cinematic take on the end days.
In The Antichrist, Friedrich Nietzsche sees the end days as part of his vast criticism on Christianity, naming the Antichrist as the priesthood who use sin and redemption to control a watered-down religious life. To the would-be minister, son of a Protestant pastor, and unapologetic cultural critic, Nietzsche’s Antichrist is not a future mythical figure, but those who proclaim the goal of Christianity is to forgive presumed sins in a last judgement at the prescribed end, essentially a Pavlovian reward to escape today’s made-up misery.
To Nietzsche, the priesthood – whether the synagogue, church, or upper echelons of government – is fundamentally anti-intellectual and must make science an enemy to oppose “the sound comprehension of cause and effect.” Faith is subjective and unprovable, whereas science is objective and provable, and thus must be disavowed at all costs lest the hierarchy of lies be exposed. Instead of liberating humankind, a weaponized Christianity designed by the main New Testament author Paul restrains our better instincts, creating an afterlife as a tool to control childlike masses and rule over an uninformed rabble.
In today’s vernacular, disinformation is rampant, especially via social media that keeps us occupied with the trivial instead of sharing and celebrating verifiable truths. Citizenship becomes dumbed down to simple workmanship, while the mob is distracted by idiot entertainment, self-help nonsense, and non-stop selling. The Christian theological grip on truth remains anti-intellectual, anti-evolutionary, and anti-scientific, such as a preposterous belief in a 6,000-year-old earth made in seven days, while denial of obvious facts such as inequality, evolution, and global warming go hand in hand with control from above.
To be sure, myth and mysticism can help explain the unexplainable. We are all alone in some way with our own worry about existence and the future. Belief in God or the moon in Jupiter offers hope, but using war as an apocalyptic flashpoint to witness the end is a myth too far, whether fought on Har Megiddo in northern Israel or delivered by a flurry of WWIII megaton nuclear warheads. Preventing war is the best option to achieve future happiness, including for the 14,400 select faithful jostling at the gates to enter the next world. Whatever happened to the blessed peacemakers in a religion of love?
If the bombs don’t get us – divinely ordained or not – a widening political divide continues to fuel the fire of an America in disarray as the middle leaches to the extremes. Life is full of everyday conjecture, ominously so in an era of rigid opinion, hot-take judgements, and billionaire-controlled asocial media, but nowhere is the rhetoric more toxic than in the United States, where intransigence has become a negotiating tool in an increasingly bitter left-right rage. Anger over lost manufacturing jobs (especially to China), uncertain finances (as ever), and a nostalgic Archie Bunker binary “manosphere” (when “girls were girls and men were men”) add to the heat, stoked by a new breed of Internet alchemists.
The coming revenge-filled second administration of Donald Trump – chief divider in a presumed less-than-great America – is increasing the heat even more as addictive social media brings out the worst in a carnival of hate, egged on by an unaccountable media more into mudslinging than mudraking. Trump may have other motives – White American growth, closed borders, and plutocratic rule – but the main goal is money. Witness the endless selling of Bibles, steaks, running shoes, pickleball paddles, hats, NFTs, suit fragments, …, even victory cologne as if an evangelical deodorant salesman selling to those who sweat for God and country. Everything is for sale, including government assets as the new libertarians prepare to strip anything that isn’t nailed down. Is government even needed in that America?
Trump is the figurehead of a reformed muscular capitalism where “more is more,” falsely claiming greed as the way to higher living in a 24/7 infomercial. He is the standard bearer of redemption by consumption, opposing weak “love thy neighbor” liberal thinking after more than four decades of failed trickle-down neoliberal economics and globalism. Fear is the main tool, whether an afterlife withheld to the unrepentant or in the here and now as in obvious populist headlines or tweets, such as “Evil immigrant kills honest citizen while inept government looks on” or some other phony tabloid atrocity. Make America Great Again is another fake, quasi-religious claim about future salvation, financial or otherwise.
In fact, true Christians act to reduce their enemies in this life rather than wait for salvation in the next. Good deeds and sharing matter more than perpetuating a priestly order over our souls. But that is of little concern to today’s fishermen doom-sayers, hell-bent on control, who purposely confuse New Testament love with Old Testament horror as they toddle off with our savings. Is it any wonder tax cuts accrue to the richest when they make the decisions, while corporations benefit from accompanying cutbacks in health, education, and environmental protection? As long as one can purchase the latest relics at Trump.com.
The economic caste system keeps the poor stuck in mud, although few dare to point out excessive wealth as the reason, fingering sharing as a curse on individualism straight from the pages of Ayn Rand. The sugary platitudes include “The Lord helps those who help themselves,” standard libertarian sentiment for the able, yet no use to those unable to compete (and not in the real Bible). In fact, such bootstrap creation doesn’t exist, only extensions as British economist E. F. Schumacher noted in his 1973 Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered, where “the poor are more dependent on the rich than ever before, … gap-fillers for the rich.” Today, the old economics is even more rigged, further widening an already obscene inequality by insider deals and restricted-access technology.
As noted by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, “As voters we have lost sight of any collective belief that society could be different. Instead of a better society, the only thing almost everyone strives for is to better their own position – as individuals – within the existing society.” Alas, it is difficult to unite against the greedy when Silicon Valley spends $394 million to sway the vote ($243 million by recent Trump convert Elon Musk). It is hard to include civic duty at the ballot box when votes are so easily bought and rarely make a difference.
The free-market pendulum has been swinging to the right for decades, the New Deal sell-off starting with Ronald Reagan and his derisive “I’m from the government and here to help,” followed by Bill Clinton who repealed the 1933 post-crash Glass-Steagall Act that regulated bank investments, and Barack Obama’s 2009 bank bailout. Why not dismantle the rest and remove all government regulation? What will remain of the commons if everything is sold?
As the digital behemoths gobble up local businesses in the name of presumed market efficiency, the growing tech takeover aims to make the wealthy even wealthier. Efficiency to the tech elites means no regulations, fairness forgotten in a “me-first” future MAGA world, where quantity matters over quality. In fact, regulation is needed more than ever to counter the proliferation of online lies, Internet scams, and fake AI-generated content. Without moderation, the Internet is another Wild West, a playground for the strongest according to classical economics and predatory capitalism. No country for weaklings in an evermore aggressive, push-button Wi-Fi and AI world.
We are embarking on a French Revolution in reverse, restoring an aristocracy of wealth, with the king’s head glued on, well-connected as usual and proclaiming a religion of reborn greatness – Make Jesus Great Again. Trump and his billionaire cronies are readying democracy for the guillotine to restore an unabashed American priesthood, tithing included in every citizenship – a paywall Pravda – updates regularly installed at $9.99 per month.
The goal is to replace bureaucratic and regulatory oversight with Silicon Valley savants, a lean, supposedly streamlined intermediary acting as gatekeeper to control the flow of information and money. The behavioural idealogues want to run the show like twinkling Mad Men singing from their consumerist hymn sheets. Paypal, Amazon, Facebook, and X are just four of the horsemen (X-men Musk might joke). Black Friday will be year round, run by the new cyber bullies raised to department heads. As in any gamed economy, the rich take the cash and the consumer is left holding the bill.
Who better to lead an anti-intellectual battle against a message of equality, inclusivity, and diversity than a cabal of techno priests atop the triangle of the proposed new world “system” (one can’t call chaos and incompetence “order”). At least 12 billionaires have already been appointed to run Trump 2.0, the trimmer barons and robber mandarins of our times. Rana Foroohar of The Financial Times calls them “techno libertarians” in “a marriage of techno-determinism and libertarianism,” where “the line between Milton Friedman and tech billionaires such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Mark Zuckerberg blurs into a philosophy that aims to end all constraints on markets.”
One can add Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who stated he was “very optimistic” about Trump’s plans to cut back more regulation. Indeed, Trump has been created precisely to marshal a newly invigorated corporate takeover, free from government oversight. “Modernization” means selling to the private sector. The world must not end as Frank Zappa joked in paperwork.
“Efficiency” is the buzzword to hide the real motivation. Tech control is about the bottom line, demanding uniformity not freedom of speech and diversity (such as they are). Tech control is about cyber bullies punishing more doom-scrolling minions at the till. They never stop stealing like rust. Payday lenders rake in record profits via easy online access with obscene annual rates up to 350%, while predatory gambling and credit card debt scale to new highs.
The big lie is that government doesn’t work and must be overthrown by an elite billionaire class, the übertech-men prescribing Trumpism for the lesser “brute-men” wearing MAGA hats like rosaries, for whom all the commandments are to be broken in the name of efficiency. Perfection is a downloadable app, without an undo or unsubscribe button when the auto-bills overflow. You too can be a winner on the backs of even lesser brute-men in a new Amway America as FOMO is raised to religion by the cyber priests whose collection plate is wired directly into the sermon through rage-to-engage social media algorithms.
Everything is for the chop, including the Department of Education, the Consumer Financial Protection Board, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Will Bill Gates get to install his standardized testing hobby horse via Microsoft licence or receive more government funding for his so-called small modular reactors, a still unproven and costly nuclear technology? The rewiring of the brains of tomorrow has begun. But why can’t Gates use his own billions as in The Giving Pledge? – tomorrow will be too late. Even Daylight Saving Times may be cut, initially designed to conserve electricity and preserve fuel during World War One.
Cementing his status as chief Trump-whisperer and wealth influencer, Musk exclaimed after the November 6 election, “It is morning in America again.” The world’s richest man stands to become a major benefactor after donating $240 million to Trump’s campaign, assuring his place at the libertarian high table. Access isn’t cheap, although millions mean little to a multi-billionaire. Since the sun rose on November 6, the richest ever person’s wealth has grown by 77% to over $400 billion. Will Musk become the first trillionaire thanks to Trump’s proposed tariffs against the new Department of Government Efficiency boss’s competitors?
Perhaps Musk is protecting his own investments to ensure that the $7.5 billion, 500,000-strong, EV charging network in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is rolled out across the country as planned by 2030 or that he need not unionize his growing workforce via Trump-stamped edict. Musk also called for an end to the $7,500 federal EV credit that no longer applies to his own company, Tesla having reached the 200,000 sales limit in 2018. If you can’t get your own free government credit, stopping the competition is the next best thing.
A one-time darling of the left for engineering the electric-vehicle revolution – now at over 10% of global sales (50% in Europe) and still growing despite a Big Oil hybrid pushback – Musk is a dark horse. No doubt, he wants to pay less tax and promote union bans at the expense of workers in the name of efficiency – standard libertarian thinking that doesn’t apply to all. Reducing excessive regulations and bureaucratic management is to be welcomed, but not everyone can benefit from a presidential friendship as in a real democracy. Perhaps Musk wants to redirect NASA funds to realize his goal of dying on Mars. Or is the real goal to stop government taming the tech titans? No one is against trimming the fat as long as one doesn’t hit bone. The first Trump administration increased the US national debt by $8 trillion.
Fast-evolving artificial intelligence, automation, and robotics don’t yet control our lives, but the tech takeover may be the scariest future world, where the transactional is codified by a zero-sum über-inequality. In that future, the rich don’t get richer, they get super richer, while the rest pay more as online sales approach parity with bricks and mortar, destroying local economies, turning warehouse workers into assembly line shop rats, and delivery drivers into slaves (check out Ben Hamper’s Rivethead and Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You for a glimpse into that horror). Have your credit card ready.
Next up is planetary warming that may finish us off before any world war or tech takeover as the earth’s climate finally spirals out of control. That end has already begun as each year brings more damage. 2024 was the hottest year ever, besting 2023’s hottest. First convened in 2000 in Rio de Janeiro on the anniversary of Earth Day, the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCCC) assesses the effects of anthropomorphic global warming and reports its findings every five years. The last report in 2023 (AR6) warned that changes from greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are now unavoidable and irreversible with “a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”
In his 2015 Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ “On care for our common home,” Pope Francisco cited pollution, climate change, throwaway culture, biodiversity loss, global inequality, the globalization of technology, human fulfilment, and ecological education among a long list of worries. He urgently appealed “for a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet.” That was ten years ago. UN secretary-general António Guterres was more direct, noting that 2024 was a “masterclass in climate destruction.” Without any serious changes, 2025 will bring even more bad news. 2026 will be worse.
It’s not as if we didn’t know. The petroleum industry has known for decades that carbon dioxide warms the atmosphere via the greenhouse effect, yet did nothing to counter emissions and even blocked further research. According to a 2023 Science study, the American Petroleum Institute “has been aware of potential human-caused global warming since at least the 1950s,” while Exxon “has known since the late 1970s that its fossil fuel products could lead to global warming with ‘dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050.’” As noted in a 1982 internal Exxon report on the effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide, “Our best estimate is that doubling of the current concentration could increase average global temperature by about 1.3º to 3.1º C.”
In 1988, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies director James Hansen testified to the US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources about his research on the greenhouse effect. He concluded that global temperatures are the highest since instrumental measurements, a causal relationship between greenhouse gases and global warming, and the beginning of extreme events. The subject was so worrisome to stumping Republican candidates that political advisor Frank Luntz proposed a less-frightening name in a 2002 memo: “It’s time for us to start talking about ‘climate change’ instead of global warming and ‘conservation’ instead of preservation.” Catastrophe was turned into crisis followed by business as usual.
Despite the obvious scientific conclusions on anthropomorphic global warming, 36% of Americans don’t believe humans are responsible for climate change let alone planetary warming via greenhouse gas absorption from burnt fossil fuel emissions and leaked methane, not surprising when the news and government policy is set to maintain a global economy run on oil. Some even call global warming a hoax, designed to counter American economic dominance.
Today, the incoming administration in Washington is sharpening its claws against green reforms. Expect more drilling, more fracking, and more exported liquid natural gas (LNG) as the world’s number-1 historic polluter rolls back billions of dollars in planned clean-energy funding. The United States can afford to go it alone, damn the rest, but none of the rhetoric is good for the environment as the lies are repeated to maintain the status quo and oversized investment in fossil fuels ($7 trillion in annual subsidies according to the IMF).
How gullible must one be to believe that wind mills cause cancer, global warming is a hoax to harm rich nations, and $369 billion in green spending is a scam? Even those on the right know the truth, such as 18 Republican house members who called on speaker Mike Johnson not to axe the IRA’s clean-energy tax credits after Trump threatened to repeal some or all of the law (80% of investment and jobs are in red states). Environmental Entrepreneur’s Bob Keefe stated the new administration should support the IRA if it was “truly interested in creating jobs, driving economic growth, bringing down energy prices, because we know that solar and wind is the cheapest power that there is available in America.”
Destroying green investment will also worsen American competitiveness with China. As the outgoing US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm noted, the IRA is already bringing supply chains and critical mineral processing back home with 900 new factories: “It is a bad strategy to turn your back on all this investment reshoring of manufacturing jobs.” The post-carbon revolution is under threat, however, as her appointed successor is a fracking CEO, who has stated there is no climate crisis and is unlikely to share market and political sensitivities toward clean-energy technology.
Of course, Donald Trump and Joe Biden are little different when it comes to selling oil, including LNG to Europe as industry continues to suffer the loss of Russian gas, although Biden did pause pending export projects. War is good for business. The flow of oil also requires the United States to remain as the world’s policeman. Trump may find that “drill, baby drill” is more military than economic, where Pax Americana exists to keep the oil flowing. Trump calls it energy dominance. Democracy, dictator, it doesn’t matter.
As hard as it is to stop what has been put in motion, developing nations cannot grow as developed nations did on the backs of coal, oil, and natural gas. The COP29 NCQG plan is a start and must be backed with action over words, calling for between $300 billion and $1.3 trillion per year in financing to developing countries by 2035. The alternative is to roll on as usual, doing more of nothing. Netflix is full of superhero movies to pass the time.
So what to do? Electrification is one future that could halt the consequences of two centuries of burning fossil fuels. The current global electric grid is about 8 terawatts (1 TW in the US). Double that will be needed to electrify all coal, oil, and natural gas plants. Add another current grid’s worth to electrify all cars, trucks, and buses, requiring about 24 TW in total to replace petroleum. Crazy? Sure, and even crazier if we want to do it by 2050. The current percentage of green grid energy is about 1 TW or roughly 10% of electric supply and 2.4% of what we need. Turning the Titanic around might be easier. But what if we have no choice?
Continuing to burn fossil fuels threatens our climatic future with more hurricanes, flooding, sea-level rise, acidic oceans, melting permafrost, albedo loss, and drought, today’s seven environmental plagues as scary as any apocalyptic horsemen. If one counts Exxon and Mobil as a single human entity (see 2010 Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court ruling), the Seven Sisters also fit the dreaded six moniker. Burnt carbon is the new end, because of a continuing daily offering of 100 million barrels of petroleum (5 million in wind-rich Texas), 10 billion cubic meters of natural gas, and 23 million tons of coal – while fossil fuels still produce 88.4% of carbon dioxide emissions (coal 38%, oil 30%, natural gas 19%).
Last year, Elon Musk downplayed the concern in a tweet, “… climate change definitely will not end the world as we know it!” And yet he funds the $100 million Carbon X Prize, a bold initiative designed to remove atmospheric carbon, albeit not affordable on a viable scale. More carbon is not the answer as in continuing to burn fossil fuels with carbon-sucking add-ons. More carbon perpetuates dangerous political regimes, pollution, and global warming. More carbon speeds us to the end.
With time running out to tame our environmental mark on nature, one can see that oil is the master of our fate. Why not rooftop solar on every church and public school, electric engines for every government runabout and public bus (easily recharged overnight in existing warehouses), and no more trillion-dollar subsidies to the oil industry? Community solar can be the new church in a shared commons that takes pressure off piping in more supplies to even bigger cities. The new Trump administration can’t tear it all down and stay the course.
Individual states are also strengthening their green plans to counter a potential loss of federal aid with California leading the way. The bans are coming in Europe and California. As is the competition from hybrid technology and liquid fuels that keep the petrol barons in business. China is leading the way, lapping the United States and Europe on renewable energy investment, development, and sales. Consumers want greener and cleaner energy, not just for the atmosphere, but for economic savings. Why not embrace the change? Isn’t it time to end the business of oil?
Global warming is the most serious threat to our future. We have about 25 years to reduce 50 billion tons of greenhouse gases annually pumped into the atmosphere to essentially zero and then start sucking out the burnt carbon added since the beginning of the industrial age. With China and India ramping up their Western ways of consumption that seems unlikely. Adaptation may be all we have left.
Applause to those trying to counter the continued pollution and warming by Big Oil, from big to medium to small (e.g., Greenpeace, Extinction Rebellion, The Great Bubble Barrier). One can benefit from removing waste and concentrating on simpler goals: walk or take public transport instead of driving if you can, buy second-hand, take the stairs. Symbolic, but also important for change. We can’t wait any longer to be useful. Boos to all those who don’t care enough to stop what’s going on (primarily the fossil fuel industry and government backers).
Ending the burning of petroleum for power and liquid fuel in a doubling or tripling of the electric grid is scary, just as the expansion of electrification was at the turn of the twentieth century that brought modernity to the world. Of course, rooftop solar is unmetered, representing a fundamental shift in the world economy. No one needs to know what I do with my own home-grown power. It’s not world government the nay-sayers fear, but no government.
Heaven is not a future reward, but the act of doing good today. We are on our last warnings. The earth will survive our bad stewardship; humans may not. Increased electrification offers the best chance to stop more pollution and warming. Armageddon versus electrification? It’s our choice.
Enola Gay
Is mother proud of little boy today?
Ah-ha, the kiss you give
It’s never going to fade away.– Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (Enola Gay)
The world spins on its axis
One man struggles and another relaxes.– Massive Attack (Hymn of the Big Wheel)
I know we’ve come a long way
We’re changing day to day
But tell me, where do the children play?– Cat Stevens (Where do the Children Play)
This post was originally published on here
