A recent headline in the dead tree edition of the Opinion section inThe Washington Post bore the ominous headline, “Coronavirus is Killing You, but Climate Change is Killing Us!” I figured this would be an entertaining read, and of course it did not disappoint. When I searched for the ones and zeroes version for blog purposes, the title didn’t come up. I finally found it, with the changed title of “Politicians blew off Gen Z’s climate goals. The coronavirus shows we can act fast.” What is it with Lefty rags having to changing idiotic titles of their stories? Out of curiousity I did a quick search for the same issue on Conservative publications but came up empty. Hopefully our Lefty troll pals can be constructive and provide some examples – genuinely interested!
Back to the story. This post is just short enough that I can go blow by blow through the article. It starts off with:
By Jamie Margolin
Jamie Margolin, an 18-year-old Colombian-American climate justice activist, is a founder of the international youth climate justice organization Zero Hour, and author of the upcoming book, “Youth to Power: Your Voice and How To Use It.”
I’m 18 years old. In the four years I’ve spent fighting for climate justice, I’ve constantly heard the same excuses from the leaders who are supposed to protect me, my future and the future of generations to come: “We just can’t do that. We can’t transform our economy. We can’t change that fast.”
First off, I’m sorry that you went through high school without any parents in your life. To clarify, for all I know you may have been raised by your biological mother and father, they just haven’t been parents to you for the last four years. When you could have been developing life skills, enjoying your youth, and maybe getting an education, you’ve been instead following this crazed death cult that’s been calling for the Apocalypse in 5-10 years for, what, a half century now? And how do I know you haven’t had an education? I’m impressed that in four years of high school you haven’t had an English teacher who taught you about that mysterious, exotic thing known as the adverb. Between the title and opening paragraph you’ve already made two grammatical errors – you should be calling for us to move/act quickly. Save the adverb!
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi mocks the Green New Deal as the “green dream or whatever.” President Trump dismisses the idea that the United States should ditch fossil fuels: “I’m not going to lose that wealth. I’m not going to lose it on dreams, on windmills, which frankly aren’t working too well.” Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, who unrolled a “middle ground” climate plan last May, instructs critics who want more drastic action, like a refusal to replace old natural gas pipelines, to “go vote for someone else.” When I testified in Congress last fall, Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) told me that the United States shouldn’t take urgent action because other countries aren’t doing their share to reduce emissions. These climate proposals simply aren’t realistic, I keep hearing.
Maybe part of the reason people aren’t feeling a sense of urgency to adopt The Green New Deal is beacuse one key component missing from it is… the impact it will have on the climate. Yes, unlike you I actually read the entire bill, and you might want to do the same. This drek was such a powerful message that Democrats actually got offended when Cocaine Mitch called for a vote on it.
Well, the coronavirus pandemic has blown their cover. It has exposed how government leaders, and the American public, actually can make immediate, dramatic behavioral changes — even when those changes have serious consequences for the economy and our quality of life. It’s just that, until now, they haven’t been willing to.
In Ron Howard’s Arrested Development Narrator Voice: “Actually, it didn’t.” The biggest difference between the two issues? The Kung Flu Virus and the Boogie Wuhan Flu is real.
Don’t get me wrong: I am strictly following public health guidelines. I am staying indoors and self-isolating. I canceled all the events and travel that I had planned for the next few months. I am doing all my schoolwork, socializing and activism online. I gave up my freedom of movement and my ability to fully pursue my passions, and I did this immediately and gladly, because I will make sacrifices to keep us all healthy. I’m encouraging all my friends and peers to do the same. I do not want to catch the disease or transmit it to older and more vulnerable people.
Excellent on all counts, and good on you! Note that the big difference between the two crises is that the Corona Virus is calling for temporary changes (although plenty of Democrats want them to be permanent). You’re demanding we permanently surrender our freedom. As appealing this may sound in your drum circle, this one is a hard sell with the Normals.
But the way the coronavirus disproportionately affects older people is the exact way the climate crisis disproportionately affects young people. According to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the coronavirus fatality rate is as high as 11 percent among people between the ages of 65 and 84, but 0.1 percent for those between the ages of 20 and 44. In China, more than 80 percent of deaths occurred in adults older than 60; in Italy, that proportion is more than 96 percent. While those in my generation are indeed at risk of getting the virus, and no age group is safe from covid-19, older generations have the highest risk of dying from it.
When it comes to the climate crisis, most of the statistics are flipped: Young people will suffer the most. A United Nations study estimates that countries have roughly 10 years to take “unprecedented” actions to cut carbon emissions, before it’s too late. In a decade or two, many of today’s most influential politicians won’t even be around. But my generation will be. And we will be suffering and dying in massive numbers from the countless harms of the climate crisis: air pollution permanently damaging our lungs and immune systems; more pandemics of infectious diseases; severe and frequent natural disasters, droughts and famine; a projected 150 million people displaced by sea level rise.
Remember that part about the continuously moving target of how the end is coming in ten years for a few decades? Your case isn’t helped by the smartest president in American history bought a $15 Million mansion that’s going to be underwater in a few years.
You want young people to sacrifice — to stop socializing, to shut ourselves inside — so older people can live. But many older people aren’t sacrificing so the youth can live.
Our leaders say shutting down extractive fossil fuel industries would be too disruptive. They say factory farming and animal agriculture are here to stay, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. They say it’s too expensive to build mass transit. They say it’s simply impossible to get to net zero emissions by 2030. They say rapidly transitioning to a renewable-energy economy is too inconvenient, too expensive.
It’s true: Those things are hard. But the coronavirus has proved that they are not impossible — that people will act in an emergency when they understand that it threatens them. Under normal circumstances, the climate catastrophe seems remote, or at least remote enough. Corporations think in terms of next quarter’s results, and politicians worry about the next election, which is at most six years away. There is no incentive to take inconvenient action, so the powerful claim they “can’t.”
I’m going to be constructive here, and offer some serious advice that will help you get taken seriously – show us a plan. In simple, broad strokes:
- How have you determined what the “correct” global temperature or rate of change is? And what are those starting benchmarks?
- Show us a a timeline, and what results we should expect to see by your drastic action. And no, “The fact that our model wound up wrong is further proof of how drasticly the climate is changing!” If it wasn’t accounted for in your orginal plan, then you’re wrong.
- How are you riolling this out? If we’re going to move on from fossil fuels, where is all of the alternative energy going to come from? Where will all of those solar/wind/turbine sources going to be placed?
- And of course, what will be the cost? And no, “It will pay for itself with the bazillions of dollars in health care savings and the world not being destroyed!” isn’t research or data.
Back to the end of the article:
This pandemic shows that they simply won’t. We’ve seen schools and businesses and churches closed, and sports and entertainment events canceled. The social and economic consequences of this emergency response have been dire, including mass layoffs and losses in profit. Our leaders have demonstrated a sudden, passionate willingness to make corporations completely modify the way they operate and to shame people into changing their habits. All of this contradicts the usual excuses for climate inaction.
This pandemic has brought business as usual to an official halt. When the worst of the illness has passed, instead of rushing to return to “normal” — the old, comfortable pattern of destroying the planet — we can take this opportunity to restructure our economy and society in a way that will ensure today’s children can live.
My generation is giving up our youth — our schooling, our fun and our freedom — so that you can see next year. When this is over, you may have to keep giving something up so that we can see the next century.
Whoah – you are not “giving up your youth” for us. I’m not belittitling what you’ve given up, whether it be spring break trips, proms, or graduations. But many grown ups are giving up these things called “their livelihoods”. And when this is over, we’ll go back to producing things like the energy that charges your smart phones, your organic/fair trade/free range coffe beans, and everything else that generates the wealth that funds your ability to pretend that working for some parasitic activist group grants you some kind of sainthood.
You gave up your youth when you joined this cult. I’ll leave you with one prediction that I make with 100 percent certainty – you’re going to be miserable until the day you leave.
“It’s going to put a pause on anything climate related. In the policy discussions for the next 6-12 months, climate is probably not going to be mentioned, it is going to be about coronavirus and economic recovery.” (@Peters_Glen) https://t.co/OnJtF9Jl5z— tomjennings (@tomjennings) April 14, 2020
“Thunberg’s school strike, it turns out, was the culmination of five years of fraught domestic crises featuring episodes of mental illness that spurred Ernman and her family to question whether the problem lay with them or with the world”.
It’s them. No question. https://t.co/8OBBuSwtCc
— Tom Nelson (@tan123) April 13, 2020
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Cross posted from Brother Bob’s Blog
I don’t knwow why you guys keep feeding the trolls. They only come here to hijack threads and bloviate whatever unsubstantiantiated talking points they have for whatever day it is.
Ah, where have you gone, Larry Weisenthal from Huntington Beach?
@Brother Bob: I guess we get distracted by shiny stupidity.
@Deplorable Me: It is pretty shiny, isn’t it?
@Brother Bob: Playing a game of Wack-A-Troll its boredom in the lock down world