Economist Dean Baker argues that, while fiddling around on the fake deficit problem, our Beltway Establishment is ignoring the real crisis we face: climate change. “In reality, the campaigners are spewing utter nonsense when they imply that the well-being of future generations will be in any way determined by the size of the government debt that we pass on to them…[But] Neglecting the steps necessary to fix the planet out of a desire to reduce the deficit is incredibly irresponsible if we care about future generations.”
I’ve posted this before, but see also Bill McKibben on climate change in Rolling Stone over the summer. “June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.“
And how does our Democratically re-elected president propose to lead the world in tackling this looming crisis? As Will Oremus pointed out in Slate, with rhetorical lamentations and no real action of consequence. “what’s obvious is that no one should expect a serious push for a comprehensive climate policy from the White House anytime soon.” In other worse, second verse, same as the first. But, hey, maybe eventually we’ll get some tax credits for swim lessons or something.
Update: The World Bank notes we are on track for a four degree rise in temperatures over the course of the century. Keeping it under two degrees was our previous goal. This is not good.