CSotD: IPCC is a-checkin’ on down the line
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Peter Schrank comments on the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, specifically noting the wildfires raging in Greece (in case you thought only we here had them).
And David Pope echoes the concern, with a slightly less grim cartoon overall but adding some lightning-bolt-hurling on the part of a god depicted not as angry but with greed displayed on his helmet and a total lack of concern displayed on his face.
I find it interesting that foreign cartoonists are far less centered on their own nation’s concerns than Americans, but this is hardly the first time that’s come up.
Of course, it’s not hard for Schrank to realize that Britain is bound into the same weather patterns as its European neighbors, while we seem to feel our side of the globe is somehow isolated, but Pope is clear ’round in Canberra, even farther off, yet still better connected.
Henny Beaumont addresses the potential stilling of the Gulf Stream, which has been predicted well before the latest IPCC report, largely due to the heavy influx of fresh water from melting ice caps. Should this happen, actual flooding would be far less significant than the loss of the warm water influence that makes Northern Europe’s weather so mild.
Pope accused the wealthy of causing the disaster, but Beaumont focuses on the notion that the elite will survive and the poor will be beaten back. She adds several elements here that Brits will pick up on, like Boris’s faithful dog, Home Secretary Priti Patel, and his inside-out umbrella, and there is, overall, a Guernica-like element to this cartoon.
It’s hardly appealing, but, then, it’s hardly intended to be.
From Germany, Guido Kuehn offers this hellscape, with the caption “‘Make the earth subject to yourself’ was, by the way, not a request but a character test.”
As he suggests, we have failed that test.
Pat Bagley offers a related take, though I would challenge his “Oops,” because, if anyone at the top of the pyramid has truly noticed the looming disaster, they aren’t saying so aloud. But that’s well balanced by his depiction of a world economy built on oil, which fits in with Kuehn’s more horrifying take.
Before we go further, First Dog on the Moon offers the Cliff Notes version of the IPCC Report, and, while I usually post only a bit of his multi-panel works, I’ll provide the whole thing today so you can be up to date on what we’re discussing:
Brenda’s call for action rather than hope makes sense, because we’ve already tried sitting around and hoping for our leaders to act, and it hasn’t seemed to accomplish much.
Maybe we could use some of the working-class fury common in Australia and Europe. They seem to be a lot easier to piss off than we are.
Thing is, when we found documents proving that the Tobacco Institute was purposely conspiring to hide, and even to falsify, the truth about smoking and cancer, we rose up and knocked them down, but we’d sat on our hands through all the warnings and suspicions leading up to that revelation.
The IPCC Report may not prove a conspiracy within the fossil fuel industry, but it certainly shows that we need to convert faster and cooperate more, and that this has to include China and India.
But it also has to include us, the country that couldn’t decide if Hitler and Tojo were real threats until bombs fell on Pearl Harbor.
Juxtaposition of the Day
It probably wouldn’t be enough, today, to find documents showing an oil company conspiracy, and I doubt the IPCC Report will be accepted, either.
Although Deering and Stahler are discussing Covid and not climate change, the fact remains that truth — even objective scientific truth — has become a partisan tool and that our leaders are perfectly willing to lie in our faces and dare us to hold them accountable.
Rand Paul puts out categorically false, nonsensical lies and paranoid messages that go far beyond “spin.” He’s up for re-election in 2012, but Kentucky is solidly red and America votes by party affiliation, not by individual merit or record. Certainly not by honesty.
Even this marvelous screed — which the Lexington Herald-Leader ran under the headline “Is Rand Paul okay? His latest Covid rant seems deranged even by his standards” — includes a sad acceptance that voters will likely return him to Washington:
Meanwhile, as Deering notes, governors and state legislators are interfering in the curriculum and in the health decisions of school districts, and it’s appalling that Texas and Florida lead the nation both in refusing to allow schools to make these choices and in the growth of Covid infections.
And yet they are, and they don’t seem to care.
I like this meme that’s going around in response to the declaration that schools aren’t able to enforce mask mandates:
The good news is that there are some kids in high school today whose tolerance for bullshit is extremely low, and, unlike their elders, they’re not inclined to sit up straight with their hands folded on their desks.
The rest of us need to at least show up and vote, not just for presidents and senators and representatives and governors but for school board members. If the Dallas Independent School District can defy their governor’s insistence on spreading covid in schools, it’s likely because voters put intelligent, responsible people on that board. Not everywhere is like that.
Someone said that the reason conservatives have so much power is because liberals have their eyes constantly on the White House while conservatives also focus on mayors, city councils, state legislatures and school boards.
To use a sports analogy, they’re willing to grind it out on the ground with smash-mouth football, instead of sitting back throwing Hail Marys that fall to the ground.
You don’t have to read the whole IPCC Report, or even to accept Brenda the Civil Disobediance Penguin’s summary of it. Patrick Chappatte shows where we are now and, as he says, there’s no turning back.
We can slow things down, but there is a certain amount of momentum already built up, and we can’t re-freeze what has melted.
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