The Unz Review • An Alternative Media Selection$
A Collection of Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media
 BlogviewTed Rall Archive
Put the Planet First
Search Text Case Sensitive  Exact Words  Include Comments

Bookmark Toggle AllToCAdd to LibraryRemove from Library • B
Show CommentNext New CommentNext New ReplyRead More
ReplyAgree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
AgreeDisagreeThanksLOLTroll
These buttons register your public Agreement, Disagreement, Thanks, LOL, or Troll with the selected comment. They are ONLY available to recent, frequent commenters who have saved their Name+Email using the 'Remember My Information' checkbox, and may also ONLY be used three times during any eight hour period.
Ignore Commenter Follow Commenter
List of Bookmarks

We face so many challenges that the task of choosing which ones to emphasize and which can be edited out for the sake of brevity is nearly impossible. So many injustices afflict our fellow human beings that, of those that make the shortlist to be attacked and redressed, determining an order of priority is best left unattempted even by — especially by — those with the best intentions. (Yet we must and we shall. This process is called “politics.”)

One matter, however, is so self-evidently far ahead of the rest that calling it an “issue” doesn’t come close to doing it justice: the environment. Without a clean, healthy planet to live on, nothing else matters. Human extinction or, failing that, the collapse of civilization, as has been predicted by 2050, renders all debate on all other issues and policies moot.

Without a planet that sustains life, college affordability is irrelevant. If you are starving and there isn’t enough food, access to free health care cannot save you. A nuclear war would not be as devastating or as final as environmental collapse.

Because it somewhat granularizes the daunting magnitude of ecocide, it feels easier to focus on various aspects of environmental degradation: global warming/climate change, water pollution, smog, drought, species extinctions, food insecurity. There’s nothing wrong with that — we need our best and brightest experts on each facet of the environment. If ever there has been a phenomenon that requires holistic analysis by society as a whole, however, it’s ecocide. You can’t separate drought from rising temperatures. These problems are so intricately and inexorably intertwined and intimately interdependent that it’s nonsensical to discuss them discretely on a political level, lest we get lost in the dying weeds. There is one issue, the biggest issue ever: Humanity is killing its habitat and so is imperiling our survival as a species.

Healthy soil, a basic necessity for life on earth and agriculture, is composed of at least 3% to 6% organic matter. But 40% of the earth’s dirt has so few nutrients that it is completely degraded. By 2050, an additional area the size of South America will be depleted. And that will be with a global population of over 9 billion. Even if we abolish rapacious capitalism on a close to global scale in order to prioritize feeding the hungry over profits — an essential move toward saving ourselves — there won’t be enough decent soil to grow enough food to feed everyone.

Thirty percent of the world’s commercially fished waters are overfished. Not only does this mean less to eat, fish-free waters are under-oxygenated and have become dead zones for other life. Oceans absorb a third of carbon dioxide emissions — or they did, before ocean acidification and seas of plastics destroyed it.

So it goes, on and on and on. Air pollution kills millions of people a year. Ninety percent of humans breathe air containing sky-high levels of toxic particulate. Within five years, the world will be down to 10% of its forests; they’ll all be gone by 2100. Populations of mammals, fish, birds, reptiles and amphibians plunged an average of 68% between 1970 and 2016. Plenty were lost before and since. Oceans are boiling, hurricanes are more powerful than ever, sea levels are rising, hundreds of thousands of species of animals and plants are going extinct. Even among scientists, few are aware of what we’ve lost before industrialization.

“It’s a common misconception that the human impact on climate began with the large-scale burning of coal and oil in the industrial era,” Julia Pongratz of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology says. “Actually, humans started to influence the environment thousands of years ago by changing the vegetation cover of the Earth’s landscapes when we cleared forests for agriculture.” Pongratz was referring to her work on the 13th-century Mongol invasion of Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Genghis Khan’s empire chomped its way east, with a massive impact on what are now grassland steppes. Native Americans subjected North America to mass deforestation. Likewise, ancient Romans cut down so many trees that they contributed to global warming.

A recent survey of successful prognosticators found that the average forecaster believes there is a 6% chance that humanity will go extinct by 2100, and a 10% chance that a catastrophic environmental event or series of events could kill 10% of the global population. (World War II killed under 4%.) Considering that we’ve been around for hundreds of thousands of years, those are high odds.

Many climate experts say the climate crisis poses a relatively low risk of human extinction. Others disagree. Calling the existential threat “dangerously unexplored,” a 2022 statement in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences warned: “Facing a future of accelerating climate change while blind to worst-case scenarios is naive risk management at best and fatally foolish at worst.”

Dr. Luke Kemp at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, who led the analysis, explained: “Paths to disaster are not limited to the direct impacts of high temperatures, such as extreme weather events. Knock-on effects such as financial crises, conflict and new disease outbreaks could trigger other calamities.” Cyclones might destroy infrastructure needed to cool them during a heatwave. Crops could fail. Countries might go to war over geoengineering.

A relatively low risk of catastrophe should be weighted more heavily than a higher risk of problems with lower consequences. If there was a 6% probability that an asteroid impact might wipe out the human race, no sane astrophysicist would advise us not to worry about it. Logic suggests that stopping that asteroid would become the world’s top priority, with massive resources directed toward averting the catastrophe as lesser threats were put on hold. Six percent is too high to cross your fingers and hope for the best. It follows logically that we should do the same now when it comes to the environment.

ORDER IT NOW

The U.S. and other nations — but we’re Americans, so let’s us do us and hope other countries join us after we set an example — should adopt a prime directive into our constitutions that puts the planet first. It should read something like this:

In any situation where there is a conflict between a policy or law or regulation that would benefit the environment and a competing concern, including but not limited to the economy, the natural environment shall take precedence.

Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis.

 
• Category: Ideology, Science • Tags: Environment, Global Warming 
Hide 25 CommentsLeave a Comment
Commenters to Ignore...to FollowEndorsed Only
Trim Comments?
    []
  1. The fact is that for white western racists, those who are not white are not their equals, and they classify them as non-humans in order to kill them with 5000-pound bombs while they are children in their schools and thus speed up the process of extermination as much as possible.

    And the most curious thing is that they consider it as the most normal thing in the world and as a religious duty.

    • Agree: BlackFlag
    • Replies: @Goldgettin
    , @BlackFlag
  2. I’m not worried. In a few years I’ll be living on Mars at “Elon’s Happy Red Planet Condos.” Problem solved.

    • LOL: Adam Smith
  3. @Liborio Guaso

    We all have to be careful.
    Too much TRUTH
    makes them go crazy 🤣…

    “Imagine, all the people, living life in peace”
    A brotherhood of man. I wonder if you can.

    Prai$e be. And, they are forgiven …

    Who said that humans can only handle so
    much reality? Was it the big guy ?

  4. anonymous[256] • Disclaimer says:

    As boomer Ted Rall should remember, it was not ‘global warming’ but ‘Ice age coming!’, that was the official scare of ‘scientists’ when he was young … A 1979 TV commercial with Leonard Nimoy, Mr Spock of Star Trek, warned us how hundreds of millions could freeze to death before too long:

    Video Link

  5. Zduhaci says:

    Good on ya Ted. Nuclear power stations are particularly risky behaviour. Let’s say an asteroid happened which led to the abandonment of constantly maintaining them. Every day we roll the dice. Every day we expect to win at dice – but it’s a gamble. Speaking of the USA – you guys are rigged to blow, and if a natural disaster causes the above we are all screwed. Also the loss of our atmosphere – electrical in nature would kill everything. So why must we constantly juice it with harmful frequencies. Why Ted? Rising oceans seems like a fairly simple one. Terra forming or taking rocks out of the ocean would drop ocean levels. Simplicity is often overlooked. Thanks Ted. The war against global warming also known as the war against carbon has to be a scam. Are we not carbon ourselves? Solutions right. Plant cannabis on deforested land – it regenerates the soil plus more. And why Ted does the human body have an endocannabinoid system? When god said I give you every seed bearing herb for meat – did he mean cannabis, it contains all 20 amino acids btw, just like actual meat.

  6. Anon[363] • Disclaimer says:

    Eco Doomerism is another form of insanity.

    The mind of the insane leftist (no hate to leftism, I view myself as a bit of a leftist) must be explained, to understand the true mindset of the eco-doomer.

    The insane leftist notices the phenomenon of bullying, competition, contempt, and….social Darwinism, so to speak. They notice that the loser males are absolutely hated by the winners. They notice how the winners are given a crack-cocaine-like HIGH from dominating. They see how the winners/dominators are willing to hold down, oppress, underpay, overwork, etc. other humans to get their high. Notice that Ted Rall also has written an article about sportsball-related bullying: this is not a coincidence, it is actually a feature of this worldview. People of this worldview also might see how the winners/dominators hold success as the highest, and most absolute, value, something that overrides all values. And they see how this causes incredible misery in the “losers.”

    This is unacceptable, isn’t it? It surely seems so. But is it really? In fact, the world survives just fine, generation over generation, in conditions of Social Darwinism. From the point of view of many people, this is exactly how things should be. Many people would insist that “losers” deserve their fate, that the world is better off letting them lose. Take Ed Dutton, who insists that we greatly need to clean the gene pool. Or, take the harsh mentality of the archetypal Puritan, who would view the losers as lazy people who deserve punishment. Or, take the archetypal Nazi or aggressive Chinese person, who would plan for the losers to not breed, so as to force the population to evolve, with the end goal of domination of the planet. Or, take the mentality that is more mundane: that the misery of the losers is just built-in to human life, and some people will be miserable no matter what you do, so there is no point in wasting resources in comforting them in some way.

    This is hard to accept. It drives many people to insanity. People like Ted Rall. But the problem is…..it’s hard to make a counterargument to them!

    Wouldn’t it be convenient, it would seem…..if the greed of the Winners/Dominators led to some kind of catastrophe? Wouldn’t it be convenient if there was some law of nature that insists that Empathy is the only way to survive, such that being a Winner/Dominator is simply impossible, such that society can FORCE the Winners/Dominators to quit their domination addiction? And, induct into history, an epoch where all people are made to be empathetic?

    Enter, Eco-Doomerism. Under eco-doomerism, humans are always, constantly, potentially driving some animal to extinction, or throwing a supposedly-fragile world into an unstable state. With this being the case, we induct a social norm where humans begin to view themselves as harmful and dangerous actors. The greedy arch-capitalists, especially, are stripped of dignity, as they were the primary causers of the eco-catastrophe. This is one of the 2 main reasons for Eco-Doomerism: to get revenge against the Arch-Winners/Dominators. We will then enter an era of sensitivity, fear of harming others, and holding others responsible for the harm they cause. It would be an era where people check and balance their own behavior constantly, with the ever-present justification being environmentalism. Under this culture of sensitivity, where the Addiction of Greed is completely illegitimated, the populace would develop a sense of empathy, and that would lead to the disallowing other forms of bullying. This is the second main reason of Eco-Doomerism.

    So, Eco-Doomerism is one-part revenge against the Winners/Dominators, and one part 4-D chess to create the leftist solution to human misery.

  7. TG says:

    Indeed. But. You ignore the elephant in the room, which is massive population growth enabled/forced by globalist plutocrats like Elon Musk and their intellectual whores like Milton Friedman and Julian Simon.

    Until recently, Canada was allowed to have a modest population and vast resources. The average Canadian had a very high standard of living, but the impact of Canada on the environment was negligible. I mean just look at the place, the air is clean, the water runs pure. Man in harmony with nature.

    And then look at India, sure the average person has less of an environmental impact than the average Canadian, but there are (were) like 50 times more of them, and on about one third of the land. The Indian people are now so miserably poor that they only have two kids each because they physically can’t have more than this – you can’t ‘conserve’ any more – but the rivers run with filth, the sky is choked with soot, and the groundwater is being sucked dry. But Elon Musk has vast new markets and unlimited cheap labor, so it’s all good.

    Bottom line: modern technology is a not a magic trick. It can support a moderate number of people in comfort, or a huge number of people at miserable subsistence. There is no amount of conservation or poverty that will prevent us from stripping the land bare, if we continue to allow the rich to force/persuade/lie us into breeding to the maximum capacity that the land can support. Ignore this and we should just quit, nothing else we do can matter.

  8. ruralguy says:

    The National Academy of Sciences Study found many wild-mammal species are approaching extinction. Humans and their pets/livestock account for 96% of the Earth’s mammal biomass. Wild animals only account for 4%. We’ve destroyed 83% of the wild-mammal biomass and 50% of the wild-plant biomass across the world.

    The NAS has found we are in the midst of a 6th mass extinction event. The Ordovician/Silurian Mass extinction event seems to be the template we are following. Like today, the era started out with warm temperatures. It was hot. The average ocean temperature shot up to 113 degrees F. The air temperatures were much hotter. This caused a thermal stratification of the oceans which lead to disruption of the ocean circulation. That’s what we are seeing today in the weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) . That loss of circulation in the Ordovician led to glaciation. 85% of marine species died off in the low oxygen marine environments. Our 6th extinction event will cause a similar plunge in oxygen in marine environments, but the dangerous risk is if the atmospheric oxygen will fall. We can only survive in a narrow band 19.5%+ total oxygen composition of the atmosphere. If it goes to 16%, with the increase in CO2, humans will be toast.

    • Replies: @Felpudinho
  9. SafeNow says:

    Holman Jenkins of The War Street Journal has written multiple times that, inevitably, geo-engineering will be resorted to, to increase the earth’s albedo. I personally favor “misting yachts” because this measure would be empiric and reversible, compared to other technologies.

    I am old enough to remember when half as many people were here in the U.S. Oh, what a time. My generation allowed this to change. I apologize.

    • Thanks: Adam Smith
  10. Biff says:

    The planet is fine —- the people are fucked!

    • Agree: Achmed E. Newman
    • LOL: AxeGryndr
  11. AxeGryndr says:

    The carrying capacity of the the planet is unknown, but we are going to find it one of these decades. Meanwhile, we are going to continue making, for each first world human, more or less, over their lifetime:
    Places of residence
    Cars for transport
    Cell phones for communication
    Computers
    Washing Machines
    Refrigerators and Freezers
    Dryers
    Cook Stoves
    Microwave ovens
    Clothing
    Heating and cooling apparatus
    Wooden, metal, and plastic furniture.

    Those are some of the biggies, with perhaps only the places of residence, some clothing and some furniture not having to be replaced every 5-15 years.

    We have evolved into a single use society, where part is consumed, and part is trash, examples include a bag of potato chips, an ink cartridge, a toaster. The accompanying packaging goes to the landfill. There are thousands of examples on the market today. Then at some point, the item (aside from food) that was contained in the package reaches the end of its useful life, and it goes there too.

    You see where I’m going. Everything we have ever made in factories ultimately finds its way to the landfills. Recycling is a noble effort, but it isn’t having the intended effect just yet. How long can we maintain this unlimited candy store before it is realized we are drowning in our own waste? We originated in a biologically pure planet. We haven’t changed, but our environment has.

    Air water food reproduction. In that order, to survive. We are seeing the beginnings of compromise in all these necessities, for some time now. We had our fun, but we will have to get serious. We learned not to poison our air by controlling car emissions, and got results. By continuing to improve all other sources (smokestacks, etc), and introduce less or nonpolluting means of transportation and production, we should be ok there.

    Water is the next biggest source of concern. I think it is much worse than we are being led to believe, and we can see it is pretty bad without a smokescreen. The demand for clean water will only get worse,
    meanwhile, runoff of land based pollution ends up in our oceans. The areas most populated, and affected, will be forced at some point to make amends, or the population will disperse.

    Water and oxygen are essential to food production, as is fertile, arable land. This also goes for domestic farm animals. The alternative is synthetic unhealthy food made in factories, devoid of nutrition: witness America as the canary in the coal mine.

    Lastly, we need to reproduce to keep the species going, but we have gotten too prolific. Controlling the population is an extremely unpopular subject when you are the subject of the proposed control. Who exactly, is going to say, OK, no children for me, and how many will say it? Not nearly enough. In my lifetime, I may witness the population of the Earth tripling (!!) should I get just a dozen more years.
    Best of luck working that sticky wicket out without stepping on anyone’s toes.

    Given all these problems (and many more not mentioned) it comes as no surprise that an elite group is trying to gain control of the world to take care of it their way. Whether the Jewish mafia, or the WEF (I may be repeating) succeed in wresting control, or if nuclear war breaks out, or if worldwide famine does the job, rest assured, some happenstance will get the problem resolved, but it won’t be voluntarily, or pleasant.

  12. Oceans are boiling…

    Boiling i tells ya… Boiling! ☮

    • LOL: Felpudinho
    • Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
  13. Ted Rall, in full asinine mode, writes:

    Even if we abolish rapacious capitalism on a close to global scale in order to prioritize feeding the hungry over profits — an essential move toward saving ourselves — there won’t be enough decent soil to grow enough food to feed everyone.

    In the big end of town in America, Capitalism has long ago been abolished.
    (To the extent that the U.S is still semi-functional, amongst Small and Medium sized Enterprises/SME’s, Capitalism still exists in a diluted format, and thus America hasn’t completely imploded).
    The U.S is ruled by Crony Corporatism, whereby a select few oligarchs have captured Big Gubmint and used it to enact legislation/regulatory impediments to crush potential competitors etc, that entrenches the monopolies of the established (((players))).

    China meanwhile, in the aftermath of Mao’s death, embraced Capitalism.
    Hence the reason for its stellar economic outcomes over the last 40 years. ie:

    1) Low income and corporate taxes

    2) Much smaller Gubmint (the combination of local/state/Federal) as a percentage of GDP than the U.S.

    3) Hence far fewer busy body Gubmint bureaucrats micromanaging the lives of the citizenry and preventing the private sector from getting on with what it does best. ie: wealth generation for the nation.

    SUMMARY: Mr Rall, WHY THE F*CK would we want to abolish that one system of government that is PROVEN to lift all boats (ie: Capitalism), that delivers prosperity for the overwhelming bulk of the citizenry?
    The U.S has shunned Capitalism – hence the reason why it is a Socialist shit-hole today.

    The rest of your article is so full of falsehoods (eg: ‘. Oceans are boiling, hurricanes are more powerful than ever, sea levels are rising*), that it is not worth my time addressing.

    (*As someone recently posted in another UR thread the other day, sea levels have been rising about 0.6 mm/0.024 inches per year for well over 100 years – and that rate has been STEADY for this entire time. This is proof that the increase in CO2 in the interim was having NO EFFECT).

    And, what about this dishonest piece of alarmism that you posted:

    Healthy soil, a basic necessity for life on earth and agriculture, is composed of at least 3% to 6% organic matter.
    But 40% of the earth’s dirt has so few nutrients that it is completely degraded.
    By 2050, an additional area the size of South America will be depleted. And that will be with a global population of over 9 billion.

    I suggest that UR readers click on to the following link and learn the truth about the amount of arable land fit for farming we’re likely to have in the remainder of this century:
    https://www.naturalnews.com/2021-03-04-nasa-satellite-data-carbon-dioxide-greening-earth.html

    The headline of the article above reads: ‘New NASA satellite data prove carbon dioxide is GREENING the Earth and restoring forests’.
    From the article:

    The planet is 10 percent greener today than it was in 2000, NASA says, which means better conditions for growing crops.
    Forests are also expanding while deserts are becoming more fertile and usable for agriculture.

    Back in 2018, research found that the Sahara Desert, the largest in the world, had shrunk by more than 8 percent over the past three decades. This is truly profound as the Sahara covers an expansive 9.2 million square kilometres of territory.

    “Eight percent means more than 700,000 square kilometres more area that’s become green – an area almost as big as Germany and France combined,” reports P. Gosselin.

    “So in terms of vegetation, the planet probably hasn’t had it this nice in about 1,000 years.”

    The fact of the matter is that because of the increased amount of CO2 in the atmosphere today compared to 150 years (97% of which was produced by natural factors – NOT mankind), the agricultural output per hectare of arable land is FAR GREATER than it was a century or more ago, thus enabling us to feed far more people than in the past.

    And, as pointed out in the article above, THE EARTH IS GREENING at a rapid rate, as land areas that were previously arid/desert-like, are now available for agricultural production due to the increased levels of CO2.

    Higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are all UPSIDE with no downside whatsoever – since we know that CO2 levels are a negligible determinant in average Earth temp.

    That someone could be so stupid as to believe the lies propagated (by the same ZOG culprits that brought us the Covid Psyop, that orchestrated 9/11 and the Ukraine proxy war, that murdered JFK/RFK/JFK Jr etc), about so-called Anthropenic Global Warming, without first checking the veracity of those claims using objective sources, is testament to how much of a lazy fool you are Mr Rall.

    And it explains why your articles only get a handful of comments.
    People just ignore you Mr Rall – because you talk a lot of shit.
    (Just like that failed economist, the Marxist Michael Hudson).

  14. @ruralguy

    Wild animals only account for 4%. We’ve destroyed 83% of the wild-mammal biomass and 50% of the wild-plant biomass across the world.

    If true, it kinda makes one wish that Covid-19 had been the threat our government and the World Health Organization claimed it to be and that it had wiped out 50% of the world’s population, and 80% of Africa’s. Maybe then the elephants, cheetahs, and rhinos would have half a chance at having another 100 years of survival.

    The National Academy of Sciences Study found many wild-mammal species are approaching extinction. Humans and their pets/livestock account for 96% of the Earth’s mammal biomass. Wild animals only account for 4%.

    I’d give a lot to live in a modern world where these numbers were reversed: where 96% of the earth’s mammalian biomass was made up of wild animals and only 4% consisted of humans/pets/and livestock. The last time the percentages were skewed that way and to that extent was probably before the time of Jesus Christ.

  15. The probability of human extinction by 2050 is high, let alone 2100, where it is CERTAIN, if we persist on our current path. And, seeing as the crudest and most moronic denialism is a religion for all variants of Rightist psychopath, I’d put my money on 2050. Furthermore, it could be earlier.
    The number of cataclysmic positive feed-backs already in train eg melting permafrost and submarine clathrates releasing vast amounts of CO2 and methane, tropical wet-lands pumping out huge quantities of methane (an ‘End Glaciation Event’)tropical forests dying, burning, and turning to savanna, becoming greenhouse gas sources, not sinks, oceanic eutrophication leading to hydrogen sulphide release by anaerobes, massive wildfires releasing CO2, methane and black carbon including soot, coating glaciers and ice-sheets, hastening their melting, the collapse of the AMOC, the ‘albedo flip’ from white, reflective, sea ice to dark, heat-absorbing water in the high latitudes and ‘global dimming’ lessened and albedo lowered as East Asia moves to EVS and renewable energy etc, is a real smorgasbord for the resident denialist cretins to DENY, but they are definitely down to that job.

    • Replies: @Zduhaci
    , @Zduhaci
  16. @Truth Vigilante

    Ted Rall, in full asinine mode, writes:…

    Does he have any other modes, T.V.?

    I have been coming to this page to read comments occasionally when I see some of Mr. Rall’s really stupendously stupid ideas, just in the titles. (A couple of the times it was due to my having fat-fingered “Ron Paul”, just above.)

    In his usual clever naming scheme, Ron Unz dubbed Ted Rall’s column “A Cartoonist Sketches America”. In case readers don’t know, this is due to Mr. Rall’s having had syndicated political cartoons in newspapers a few decades ago. The thing is, I’d see the lefty stupidity on a weekly basis but not really have any way to rebut said stupidity. (A letter to the editor of our local paper? Come on, not worth the trouble.)

    Now, we can all write in, and I am glad to see ‘Ted Rall’s stupidity – after all these many years in which he could have learned something! – called out here and each column. Most especially, his “you should only be allowed (by Government, of course) to own one house” column had nice comments. I thank you guys for what must be a tedious job, as the stupidity comes out of this man in torrents.

    After all these years of seeing BS claims about the future of the earth’s climate with dates, being wrong left and right (thanks to the commenter above), anyone who still believes this Climate Calamity™ business is beyond hope.

    Ted Rall is a cartoon of a Communist come to life. Behold!

    • Thanks: Truth Vigilante
    • Replies: @mulga mumblebrain
  17. @Adam Smith

    “When the ocean gets to boiling temperature … you have to die.” (Old Japanese Engineering Professor)

    It seems like these boiling oceanic hot spots ought to be great places to extract some cheap renewable energy, using the sea water as the cold side of the cycle. Energy could be transmitted back to shore via piping attached to a chain of shipping containers – you know how I’m into shipping containers, Adam… and then … Oh, what, too Capitalistic?

    Then, there’s this gem:

    Within five years, the world will be down to 10% of its forests; they’ll all be gone by 2100.

    I’ll take me some of that action.

    “Save the bees!
    Save the trees!
    Save the whales!
    Save those snails!”

    R.I.P., George Carlin

    • Replies: @mulga mumblebrain
  18. @Truth Vigilante

    You can recognise this malignant cretin instantly. The same imbecilities, long and often rebutted, repeated over and over like a robot with a circuit failure.
    It’s appreciation of China’s system is pig ignorant and remarkably self-serving. The PRC PLANS intensively-none of his ‘Invisible Hand’ libertarian garbage. They’re too intelligent for that which is why there are NO denialist cretins like this malignant fool anywhere near power in China, and why they are massively installing renewables, turning to the buffoon’s bete noire, EVs, in huge numbers and ridding themselves of the oaf’s beloved coal.
    Indeed, the ‘libertarian’ parasite’s appreciation of the ‘virtues’ of capitalism, is sub-moronic. Capitalism operating to increase inequality and concentrate wealth and power among a most hereditary elite, is HOW it works and has always worked. Alas, stuck in that infantile stage of ego grandiosity, having just learned to shit in the potty (and here) the troll thinks differently, reality being an affront to his psychopathy. Surely he will be ‘rich’, too, one day, he being so superior.
    The cretin constantly, probably deliberately, (although that credits him with rat cunning, which might be a stretch, his other ‘attributes’ being more entomological)confuses CO2 flux with CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, the crucial PARAMETER!!!And, of course, a true trade-mark of its psychopathy, in comes the paranoia (the great worldwide scientific conspiracy) the crude Judeophobia (ZOG) and the anti-Marxist gibberish. A fairly typical Rightist psycho-Austfailia is full of them as is a septic tank of shite.

    • Replies: @Brad Anbro
  19. @Achmed E. Newman

    Yep-with specimens like this proliferating like fungal spores, no wonder ‘humanity’ is heading for the Exit.

  20. @Achmed E. Newman

    Yeah, putting dates on predictions, that are matters of probabilities, was dumb. Still, that only cancels the facts of the ongoing process of anthropogenic climate destabilisation, leading to a ‘wet hot-house’ extinction event, (as have occurred several times in planetary history) in the twisted Rightwing psyches of misanthropic, omnicidal, scum.

  21. Zduhaci says:
    @mulga mumblebrain

    I’m planning on turning 120 in the year 2100 so thanks for that. For sure the earth needs some help to heal and detoxify. And I believe probably everyone here agrees with that on some level. But I’m not an expert in the field – it looks as though I can’t debate you properly. In hindsight though – after leaving school I realized that several ideas had been implanted into all our brains via brainwashing during schooling. Abortion is great and totally normal was one, never ever be antisemitic was another – and global warming, to me, feels like an additional brainwashing insertion. I am always open to ‘let the best logic win’ btw. To be honest I just want to plant cannabis everywhere that’s all I got. On a side letter – I would add that electricity is generated via motion, and I always thought it’s pretty lame that we can’t figure out how to use the perpetual motion of the ocean to generate electricity. I am solid 1000% anti nuclear power due to the risks.

  22. Zduhaci says:
    @mulga mumblebrain

    Just gonna cash in one more side letter:

    Perhaps it was because the negative eugenics captains of industry were in charge of the script.

    When they say war on carbon – as a carbon based lifeform I say – what the f***

  23. @mulga mumblebrain

    Quote:

    “You can recognise this malignant cretin instantly.

    As my now deceased dear mother used to say, it takes one to know one!

    I KNEW that you’d be chiming in with your global warming bullshit. Just for YOUR information, my fellow Tennesseean, Al Gore (one of those that you apparently worship), in the year 2017, used 3.6 times as much electricity JUST TO HEAT HIS POOL than I have used in the last 12 months- 66,159 kWH vs. 18,019 kWH.

    As I have said many times before, if there really is anything to this global warming bullshit, then the rich bastards can make the sacrifices THEMSELVES, as they sure as hell are not “paying their way” now.

    Pardon the use of my profanity, but you and the rest of the climate change freaks make me sick.

    • Agree: Truth Vigilante
  24. BlackFlag says:
    @Liborio Guaso

    Yes, but it’s totally pointless to be worried about racism when we have rampant and accepted speciesism. In this very article, the author purports to be a progressive, and yet *shamelessly* displays this attitude.

    Because it somewhat granularizes the daunting magnitude of ecocide, it feels easier to focus on various aspects of environmental degradation: global warming/climate change, water pollution, smog, drought, species extinctions, food insecurity. There’s nothing wrong with that — we need our best and brightest experts on each facet of the environment. If ever there has been a phenomenon that requires holistic analysis by society as a whole, however, it’s ecocide. You can’t separate drought from rising temperatures. These problems are so intricately and inexorably intertwined and intimately interdependent that it’s nonsensical to discuss them discretely on a political level, lest we get lost in the dying weeds. There is one issue, the biggest issue ever: Humanity is killing its habitat and so is imperiling our survival as a species.

    Ecocide? The idea is supremacist. Every ecology favors different species. It’s ridiculous to assume one type of ecology is better than another. And if you’re going to go hyper-materialist and begin ranking (inherently supremacist) competing ecosystems by the number of species they support you run into all kinds of problems. For example, what if an ecosystem favors less species but each of those has more individuals (e.g. one trillion ants versus 100 lions). Are you going to go by numbers of individuals, why not biomass?

    The author is explicit in his last comment. He clearly cares very little about other species not to mention future species which might evolve given an ecotransformation – the more accurate, less pejorative term for what he is describing.

Current Commenter
says:

Leave a Reply - Comments on articles more than two weeks old will be judged much more strictly on quality and tone


 Remember My InformationWhy?
 Email Replies to my Comment
$
Submitted comments have been licensed to The Unz Review and may be republished elsewhere at the sole discretion of the latter
Commenting Disabled While in Translation Mode
Subscribe to This Comment Thread via RSS Subscribe to All Ted Rall Comments via RSS