Friday, June 22, 2018

WI, US mid-term elections only hope for climate change action

Dane County Executive Joe Parisi wants federal and state officials to acknowledge that climate change is responsible for recent, destructive flooding.

Good that he's trying to advance the discussion, but the real key is voting out climate change deniers and replacing them with science-based activists - - or simply realists willing to accept what their own well-informed advisers have published.

Because the Walker and Trump administrations' rhetoric and deeds are hostile to climate change science, findings and solutions, even preparations any responsible public official should be taking; Walker, as I pointed out just yesterday, toured areas extensively flooded once again up north while persistently ignoring the findings and recommendations of his own emergency management officials who have declared that climate change presents a continuing threat to the state.

While having just removed state protections from 100,000 acres of flood-mitigating wetlands, and opening the state to potentially-polluting metallic-mining right at the waters' edges.

For Walker, climate change is something to scrub off state websites and ignore,  rather than confront.

Want more proof?.

On his official twitter feed, Governor Clueless posted several videos shot from a helicopter over the flood damage up north - - none from Dane County, for the record - - but the images came with a gee-whiz, look at all that water kind of commentary which you could understand from a tourist - - 
Jun 18MoreThis is an amazing image of the force of water. 
- - but not from an informed public official who wanted to get to the bottom of things.

About an area hard hit by big storms for a third year in a row.

In fact, Walker's lack of scientific and policy awareness was matched by a total lack of self-awareness, as he posted a view of the very river that would have  been filled with toxic mine runoff right now had the open pit iron operation been opened which he pushed for several years ago, and from whose operators his campaign benefited from a secret $700,000 donation. (I cannot copy the image, but you can easily see it for yourself if you scroll past Walker's many self-promotional Foxconn and other campaign style tweets):

View of the Bad River flooding.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Not going to happen because of the massive disinformation being published by organizations that people traditionally trusted as providing news. Disaster capitalism, to the interests behind Scott Walker and GOP is a profit opportunity.

Exon, when the Gulf of Mexico disaster happened, was able to pad its recorded profits because it had a subsidiary that sold Corexit. Every other out-of-state and multinational interest can use similar stunts. And if they can't, each catastrophe one corporate interest creates results in sales to another corporate interest to provide some type of marginal remediation.

Adam Smith's free markets never actually existed (buyers and sellers with equal marketing power?!?!?!), but in today's advanced capitalism, virtually every segment of our economy is controlled by a monopoly or a small group of businesses that have structured their operations to avoid direct competition that would function on a check to market abuses.

My point is not that the situation is hopeless. My point is that there are powerful economic forces that created climate change and that profit from it. When we elect politicians that are willing to address disaster capitalism, we might see change.

While not an "invisible hand" as many misrepresent Adam Smith, the extreme wealth that is generated by cost shifting pollution (from private sector to public) and the massive revenues selling technology to the public sector because of climate change & pollution, ensure that things will not change.