New Climate Catastrophe Policy: Triage - 8

An average of bad conditions is still bad

On this date, in 2009, Dredd Blog began this series which has been exploring the various and sundry government contingency plans for handling the ongoing damage caused by global warming induced climate change.

Regular readers know that it did not take long to discover that government policy is basically "catastrophic damage from global warming is something that will happen in the future", noting that they sometimes even tend to use the term "in the next century" to try to distance themselves from the subject.

All too often their plans are summed up in significant part by the infamous words of Bush II: "you're doin' a heckuva job Brownie".

In a gulf not far away from Brownie's heckuva job, the Deepwater Horizon catastrophic oil spill became the next episode of government heckuva job goings on, brought to us by BP ("British Petroleum", "Big Pollution", "Biggest Polluter", "Bad People", etc.) in the form of another catastrophe that keeps on killing and intoxicating the environment, and will continue to do so for years to come.

Anyway, the following text is the first post in this series, re-posted today to show that conditions are the same as they were then, which is, the condition of getting worse all the time:

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The new approach to alarming climate change and the growing spectre of many increasing national and international catastrophies is beginning to look more and more like triage.

The definition of triage is:

tri⋅age –noun

1. the process of sorting victims, as of a battle or disaster, to determine medical priority in order to increase the number of survivors.

2. the determination of priorities for action in an emergency.

(Dictionary). It may be that governments are now convinced by scientists that it is too late to stop the catastrophe.

So they will develop massive triage and massive burial procedures? How enlightened is that? Notes from the Bangkok conference going on this week have indicated:

Though world leaders have trumpeted helpful tips in dealing with climate change, doubt remains on whether delegates will be able to translate them into formal text on a new climate pact during talks in Bangkok starting Monday.

(Jakarta Post). There is a dazed and confused element to the way governments are handling the spectre of catastrophe. This does not bode well for long term prospects of the human species, therefore a change in government ideology is critical.

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Avoidance of the catastrophes that are destroying the oceans before our very eyes, and killing 5 million people annually NOW, is not a serious political issue in the current election cycle.

Triage (e.g. "austerity" and loss of paid-for insurance "entitlements") is the talk of W town, footstool of the 1%, and home of the W direction.

It is what they call a real campaign issue.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.