Monday, July 31, 2023

Life Goes On......Or Does It? - and - Gustav Dore's Vision

                                    Gustav Dore's illustration for Dante's Inferno: a scene

                                    of those who are condemned to spend eternity upon

                                     burning sands, being struck by balls of fire


     The news is not good.  The year 2023 is the hottest year in recorded history

and it is probably the hottest year on Earth since before human beings became the

dominant species on the planet, and even farther on back through many thousands 

of years of prehistory.  All across the world, increasing numbers of people are being 

killed by the heat.  The temperature of the ocean water, around southern Florida, 

has risen above the hundred degree mark, killing off the corals which create the reefs, 

which are the breeding grounds and nurseries of ocean life.  And wild fires are raging 

out of control around the globe, while exceptionally violent storms bring death and

destruction beyond anything anyone has experienced before.

     All of these torments are reminiscent of scenes from Dante's Inferno, but this is an

inferno which we have brought upon ourselves, not the tortures imposed on us by

some supreme being.

      This crisis is not unexpected.  The climate scientists and truth tellers have been

warning us for decades, that if we did not strive to reduce the amount of green-house 

gas emissions that we have been pumping into our atmosphere, we were headed for

a drastic change to our global climate.  For a couple of centuries now, we have been 

burning up our fossil fuels as if there is no tomorrow, while at the same time we have 

been cutting down the carbon-dioxide absorbing, rain forests, as if they are a waste 

of space.  Now it appears that there actually may be no tomorrow for us. 

     Our species has had the power to make great changes to our planet, but we have

lacked the intelligence and will, to make these changes wisely, to preserve the health

of the Earth and every living thing in the ecosystem. From President Taft onward until

the present day, we have never had a Republican president who expressed any great 

interest in reducing the environmental impact of the fossil fuels industries, and related

manufacturing.  They have always insisted that the business of America is business, 

and if the environment suffers because of business, cost-cutting greed, then the later 

generations of us will have to deal with that.   Whenever the issue of global warming has 

come up among our Republican leaders, they have ignored the science and declared

that the rising temperature of the Earth is a hoax.  For them, personal profit is more

important than truth.  Chief among these deniers is of course, the liar-in-chief, Donald 

Trump. 

      In our 2020 election,we came close to having someone in power, who would 

help focus government attention on this coming crisis.  Vice President Al Gore was

in the forefront of advocates of clean energy and green energy.  If a full recount of 

the votes in the state of Florida had been carried out he would have become our next

president.  But the Supreme Court didn't allow the recount to go forward; they handed 

the presidency to George Bush, who had no particular goal for the presidency, other 

than a desire to invade and occupy Iraq, and kill the dictator who insulted George's 

daddy.   The result of that was thousands of lives lost and many billions of dollars

of U.S. treasure wasted instead of being spent toward getting us off of fossil fuels 

and getting us focused on green energy.

    Is it too late for us now?  We don't know the answer to that question yet.  Perhaps

we have already passed the tipping point beyond which we cannot stop the escalating 

global warming.   The heat goes on.

                                                    Eugene P. McNerney

 

 

    



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