Time To Punish Climate Abusers

The indicator that a typing monkey could eventually wax poetic came July 4 when Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene – conspiracy theorist par excellence – actually made a sensible suggestion, albeit by accident and out of context.

This proud spouter of MAGA hatred has:

• posted “Evil is being defeated by the hand of God” the day Pope Francis died;

• claimed “Jewish space lasers” sparked a 2018 California wildfire;

• argued that Muslim Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib cannot be members of Congress because they took their oaths on the Quran;

• continues embracing Trump’s Big Lie that he won the 2020 election despite losing all of the wasteful legal challenges his gang of lawyers filed:

• claimed there was no evidence that a plane crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001;

• and too many other kookazoid notions to fit into my limited space.

Sure, MTG’s bill comes from her conspiracy-congested mind and is aimed to fight desperate drought-fueled cloud-seeding and supposedly insidious airplane exhausts [chemtrails!] that an “evil they” are using to manipulate weather and people. Her scientific ignorance should surprise no one.

But let’s get this bill into law and then bring Big Oil to the bar for 60 years of deliberately “altering weather, temperature, climate.” [Yes, it would have to be an administration that was not sold to Big Oil by Trump at Mar-a-Lago last year.]

Shell was aware of the climate change consequences of fossil fuels in 1959. The corporate congregation of the American Petroleum Institute knew through a report by 1968 that “Significant temperature changes are almost certain to occur by the year 2000” and that “there seems to be no doubt that damage to our environment could be severe.”

Charlotte Tyler, writing for Georgetown University’s Common Home in 2023, ferreted out these revelations. Exxon had already been outed for knowing about the consequences of its fossil fuels by 1977.

Armed with this knowledge the petroleum industry launched an expensive and extensive campaign of disinformation to deny its own evidence as well as that by scientists as the world began to warm. And those scientists warned us that the warming planet would unleash more extreme weather events with greater destructive power.

Tyler reported that in Shell’s 1998 report, “Climate Change and What Does Shell Think and Do About It,” the company “acknowledged the connection between climate change and the burning of fossil fuels. However, instead of pledging to reduce its carbon emissions, Shell claims it will combat climate change by continuing to produce oil and gas in order to fuel economic growth and foster technological innovation. In 2000, Exxon reiterated such market strategies, claiming ‘technology will reduce the potential risks posed by climate change.’”

Let the courts decide – though the number of federal judges on the gift lists of billionaires makes that a risky proposition.

We had so many new attendees at our Stephens County Democratic meeting in June that it was suggested to go around the room and let folks introduce themselves and their concerns.

The consensus was that people were “afraid” their grandchildren wouldn’t grow up in the same country they themselves had known.

Most of these concerns centered on Donald Trump’s assault on Constitutional rights and the government which wise people had constructed to protect us from predators like Trump and his pals, who now have free rein to make the old Gilded Age of robber barons look like a cheap knock-off.

But Earth’s degradation will exacerbate the challenges the following generations will face as they deal with the damage inflicted by greedhead politicians with anti-republican tendencies. Those knowingly responsible for causing this catastrophe by “the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere” should be held accountable.

MTG was right. Will wonders never cease?

Now let’s get that monkey working on “The Faerie Queene.”