Climate change and ecological damage.
People have known, at a public political level about climate since the late 1980s and we basically have done nothing except increase the rate of producing greenhouse gases. Even now with year after year of temperature records, wild weather all over the world, major ice melts, and the UN calling for no new fossil fuel fields, the US, UK and Australian governments (among others) are promoting new coal and gas mines. The Australian government is enmeshed in fantasy.
- Biden Climate Watch
- Biden Promised To End New Drilling On Federal Land, But Approvals Are Up
- By pushing for more oil production, the US is killing its climate pledges | Adam Tooze
- Green groups’ fury at loophole in new North Sea oil test
Ecological damage continues to increase. The day by which we have estimatedly consumed all that the earth produces in a year keeps slipping back towards the start of the year.
Over fishing does not appear to have slowed in general etc etc.
One ongoing issue is the question of whether it is possible for Capitalism and developmentalism not to be destructive of the ecology?
We have to accept that these ideologies have been present during this period of ecological destruction. This may not be complete causation, for example capitalism and developmentalism have developed the way they have, precisely because they were able to freely destroy ecologies and pollute. If pollution and ecological damage had been factored into the system as costs, then they may not have developed the way they have….
However, it does possibly suggest that it is improbable that people will solve problems of pollution and ecological destruction within systems that have flourished by ignoring these problems.
Covid-19
The first year of Covid in the US, was pretty much a disaster. Apart, perhaps, from a roughly two week period in which people were cheering Tucker Carlson for persuading the president it was serious, which now seems to have been forgotten, the year was a mess. We know from the Bob Woodward interviews that the President knew Covid was serious in February 2020, but decided the American people needed to be cheered up and so he pretended the disease would vanish without much problem. Rather than face the problem, he engaged in positive thinking.
The President attacked quarantine and lock downs, he encouraged armed occupation of state buildings. According to some he thought the big cities would suffer worst and that they voted Democrat and so hindered their actions – does not appear to have helped (but part of the problem is the normalized abuse, which makes truth finding difficult). Simple things like using the pandemic plans, telling people the situation was dangerous, or coordinating PPE purchases would have helped. Sure he did help remove obstacles for vaccine production, although the vaccines were first developed overseas. He also seemed to have been caught in political bind about encouraging people to take the vaccine, and got his own shots in private.
Biden came along, and let’s disbelieve ‘sources’ who claim that there was no organisation from the previous administration for vaccine roll out. Despite the vaccines we now seem to face some Republican State admins not only distributing what appears to be misinformation, making it illegal for businesses to protect their customers and staff, and media saying that everyone should get back to work. This is odd as usually Republicans argue that businesses should be free to serve who they want and only who they want, and employ who they want etc.. I guess this is similar to the way it is ok for businesses to chose censor left wing thought and speakers, but terrible if they censor right wing thought and speakers.
The delta variant seems worse than the original form, and is spreading. The vaccines slow infection rather than stop it.
But with America now averaging about 113,000 cases a day, an increase of nearly 24% from the previous week, and hospitalizations up 31% from the week before, Republicans stand accused of causing the deaths of their own voters as the highly contagious Delta variant scythes through red states where vaccination rates are low….
In the past week Florida and Texas, states whose leaders take pride in riling the Biden administration, have accounted for nearly 40% of new hospitalizations across the country
Smith. Republican leaders fiddle while Covid burns through their own supporters. The Guardian 14 August 2021
In the UK, as far as I can see, the government has given up. The disease is rampant in India, Indonesia and South East Asia. People I know who live in those regions tell me that they hear of deaths of people they know almost every day.
Where I live the government is encouraging people from infected areas to go to the regions to buy real estate, and has contradictory rules, that make it hard for people to figure out what they should do, and was so overconfident that they blew their first serious challenge. Indeed it was so overconfident it seems to have had no plans for a problem. We have just heard from the Australian Medical Association that hospitals are not keeping up [2], and we have a long way to go before it gets really bad.
On top of that we seem to be ignoring long covid – well I have not seen any official stats – and pretending Covid is a form of flu rather than a new disease. While I’m ignorant it seems to be worth testing the hyporthesis, that in some cases Covid does long-term, or even permanent, damage to the body which produces long Covid.
In other words, the world as a whole, seemed to want to take the easy option, or even sabotage action, although it is true that some people did not. However, running around panic struck is not facing problems.
Tags: climate change, disorder, pandemic
Climate, technology and chaos Blog 
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