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
