The Right Is Wrong - 3

What Environmental Problems?

In this series we focus on political ideologies that are doing damage to various sections of society and to the environment.

The previous post in this series detailed how the federal judiciary has been loaded with right wing judges more so than at any time since the 1930's, when the not-so-great depression decimated our nation, and how that right-wing judiciary now decimates the legal landscape so that it ignores the ongoing pollution of the Earth's ecosystems.

Recently, in another series we looked at the 2012 Republican platform concerning the issue of rape as it impacts the right-wing ideology of removing a woman's right to choose.

Today we look at the impact that right-wing ideology is having on the administrative and legislative branches of government concerning the increasing damage being done to the Ecosystem of the Earth.

The 2012 Republican platform states:

The environment is getting cleaner and healthier. The nation’s air and waterways, as a whole, are much healthier than they were just a few decades ago. Efforts to reduce pollution, encourage recycling, educate the public, and avoid ecological degradation have been a success.

(G.O.P. Platform, "Protecting Our Environment", emphasis added). This is yet another position that reflects the denial psychosis determining everything from the "what economic problems" position John McCain had right up to the great financial collapse of 2008, reflecting an ongoing wide range of problems with reality within G.O.P. ideology:

''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

(When You Are Governed By Psychopaths - 3, quoting Karl Rove). This Republican "what environmental problems" fantasy comes at a time when scientists talk about "The Anthroopcene Epoch", "The Sixth Mass Extinction", and grave concern as about 200 species go extinct each day, i.e., about 73,000 species go extinct each year.

Green house gases which cause global warming induced climate change are at an all time high, as scientists warn us about crossing a line that will bring certain catastrophe:

Humanity may soon be approaching the boundaries for global freshwater use, change in land use, ocean acidification and interference with the global phosphorous cycle (see Fig. 1). Our analysis suggests that three of the Earth-system processes — climate change, rate of biodiversity loss and interference with the nitrogen cycle — have already transgressed their boundaries. For the latter two of these, the control variables are the rate of species loss and the rate at which N2 is removed from the atmosphere and converted to reactive nitrogen for human use, respectively. These are rates of change that cannot continue without significantly eroding the resilience of major components of Earth-system functioning. Here we describe these three processes.
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... biodiversity loss in the Anthropocene has accelerated massively. Species are becoming extinct at a rate that has not been seen since the last global mass-extinction event.
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Modern agriculture is a major cause of environmental pollution, including large-scale nitrogen- and phosphorus-induced environmental change. At the planetary scale, the additional amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus activated by humans are now so large that they significantly perturb the global cycles of these two important elements.

(The Damage Cannot Be Undone?, quoting Journal of Nature). Observers note that right-wing ideology is taking us back to the dark ages:

I’ve kept to domestic issues, but there are two dangerous developments in the international arena, which are a kind of shadow that hangs over everything we’ve discussed. There are, for the first time in human history, real threats to the decent survival of the species.

One has been hanging around since 1945. It’s kind of a miracle that we’ve escaped it. That’s the threat of nuclear war and nuclear weapons. Though it isn’t being much discussed, that threat is, in fact, being escalated by the policies of this administration and its allies. And something has to be done about that or we’re in real trouble.

The other, of course, is environmental catastrophe. Practically every country in the world is taking at least halting steps towards trying to do something about it. The United States is also taking steps, mainly to accelerate the threat. It is the only major country that is not only not doing something constructive to protect the environment, it’s not even climbing on the train. In some ways, it’s pulling it backwards.

And this is connected to a huge propaganda system, proudly and openly declared by the business world, to try to convince people that climate change is just a liberal hoax. “Why pay attention to these scientists?”

We’re really regressing back to the dark ages. It’s not a joke. And if that’s happening in the most powerful, richest country in history, then this catastrophe isn’t going to be averted -- and in a generation or two, everything else we’re talking about won’t matter. Something has to be done about it very soon in a dedicated, sustained way.

(Later Than We Think?, quoting Dr. Noam Chomsky). The psychopathic nature of these right-wing positions was discussed in the post The Peak of Sanity - 5.

The conservative American Meteorological Society says:

Climate is always changing. However, many of the observed changes noted above are beyond what can be explained by the natural variability of the climate. It is clear from extensive scientific evidence that the dominant cause of the rapid change in climate of the past half century is human-induced increases in the amount of atmospheric greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (CO2), chlorofluorocarbons, methane, and nitrous oxide. The most important of these over the long term is CO2, whose concentration in the atmosphere is rising principally as a result of fossil-fuel combustion and deforestation. While large amounts of CO2 enter and leave the atmosphere through natural processes, these human activities are increasing the total amount in the air and the oceans. Approximately half of the CO2 put into the atmosphere through human activity in the past 250 years has been taken up by the ocean and terrestrial biosphere, with the other half remaining in the atmosphere.

(2012 Official Statement, emphasis added). The choice is whether to believe lying politicians or to believe scientists who are seriously trying to help us avoid disaster.

The previous post in this series is here.

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