This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It first appeared at The Conversation.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1391442
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1391442
The old saying of urban planners that “nothing succeeds like failure” is not an option in this case. What’s worse, climate disruption is a moving target. The word policymakers should be using is resilience. We know, for example, that we often see negative economic shocks after spikes in energy prices (sound familiar?). To gain resilience, you typically would engineer for once-in-a-century events, but what does that mean today when “once-in-a-century” events are occurring every other year?
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The most important crisis facing humanity and every living thing on the planet continues apace, unencumbered by human intervention. Whatever problems we’ve created for ourselves pales in comparison.
Only 2 comments. I’m not surprised in the least.
Without question, the most important issue in saving the planet is to first revive and protect the already dying West Virginia coal mining industry.
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Of course the cities (et al) can’t keep up with climate change. Climate change is a massive flywheel rolling downhill and the best that the human species is willing to do is lick a finger and press it against the flywheel as it thunders past. This morning I heard a scientist representing India say that they will continue to mine and buy and burn coal for decades. Australia insists on continuing to mine and sell massive amounts of coal. Oil nations around the world plead special cases to the UN to allow them to continue extracting oil and gas at the current destructive rates. No entity on Earth can keep up with climate change because the humans refuse to act with the speed and power needed to save a biosphere being destroyed by the one species that could save it but that is instead intent on committing suicide while it destroys most, if not all, life on Earth. There will be no keeping up with climate change: Too many people want to make too much money in the little time we all have left. Money! More valuable than air to breathe, more valuable than water to drink, more valuable than all life on Earth. Any space alien ranking the intelligence of species on Earth would be remiss not to rank humans below dung beetles. (My apologies to dung beetles, who work tirelessly to maintain a healthy biosphere for us all.)
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So next Manchin is going to be pushing West Virginia plastic?
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PFAS distribution. Some state reporting may not be reliable.
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