Chamblee54

This is a double repost of internet entertainment from two years ago . This year’s gabfest on climate change is in Durban, South Africa. ( Democracy Now is broadcasting there all week.)
The progress in addressing the issue of carbon pollution is slight. Approval of the oil sands pipeline has been delayed. Some people are aware of the issue. The bad news is that the deniers have a wide audience. Some say the tipping points are already falling over, and it may be too late to make the changes, even if there were the political will to do so.
PG sat in on a discussion last night. Someone asked, “who doesn’t want to make the world a better place?” PG sensed that people were tired of his cynicism, and held his tongue. The answer he would have given is, the people who make money off the world becoming a worse place.
Representatives from nations around the world are meeting this week in Copenhagen to discuss global warming. There is reason to believe that whatever comes out of this meeting will be a compromise, and will not have any effect on the problem.
Some do not think there is a problem. The science ( which PG does not claim to understand) involves millions of factors. One of the indications of the “climategate” controversy is the vast amount of data involved, and the difficulties of processing this information.
When you believe that there is no problem, and that global warming is a scam designed to weaken capitalist countries, you believe what you want to believe.
TomDispatch posted a feature today from the pessimist side. A money quote “The best human analog to the role physics is playing here may be fascism in the middle of the last century. There was no appeasing it, no making a normal political issue out of it. You had to decide to go all in, to transform the industrial base of the country to fight it, to put other things on hold, to demand sacrifice.”
Seventy years ago, Japan attacked the United States. It was a before and after moment, and America was committed, overnight, to the struggle against Japan and Germany. We did win, at an appalling cost. ( Included in this cost were hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, and Communist domination of East Europe.)
Even if…a big if…we were to make this sort of commitment to fight global warming, there will be a cost. The energy happy lifestyle so cherished by the west may be a thing of the past. It is easier to make jokes on talk radio.

Dictionary says pro is the opposite of con.
Will Rogers said the opposite of progress is congress.
Is the opposite of a protest, a contest?
Is the opposite of a profession, a confession?
Is it profound that this would confound?
It is a profusion of confusion.