Developed Nations Are Like Gollum

but you know that if you read my blog.

Instead, this video could be a conversation-starter for people who don’t know.

The recent good news was, as Manuela Andreoni updated June 1, 2024 in The New York Times, “Vermont to Require Fossil-Fuel Companies to Pay for Climate Damage–Under the country’s first ‘climate superfund’ law, Vermont will charge large emitters for climate-related damage to the state.” Only time will show if this survives “legal challenges,” but at least it’s something for all U. S. states and fourteen territories to consider. It is strange The American Petroleum Institute cited in the article “argued the measure imposes costs on legal activities that stretch back decades and holds companies responsible for ‘actions of society at large’” when Big Oil was “gaslighting” society according to Naomi Oreskes. I wrote in my March 4, 2024 post “Same Planet, Different Worlds,” “In The [March 4, 2024] Guardian article by Noor and Milman, Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School, responded to [Exxon CEO Darren] Woods, “It’s like a drug lord blaming everyone but himself for drug problems.” The article also quoted Naomi Oreskes, Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science, and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, “For decades, they told us that the science was too uncertain to justify action, that it was premature to act, and that we could and should wait and see how things developed. Now the CEO says: oh dear, we’ve waited too long. If this isn’t gaslighting, I don’t know what is.” She added, “The playbook is this: sell consumers a product that you know is dangerous, while publicly denying or downplaying those dangers. Then, when the dangers are no longer deniable, deny responsibility and blame the consumer.”

Bill McKibben, as usual, wrote an excellent post June 1, 2024 at The Crucial Years showing updated climate challenges in “Intensity–Right Now, Everything’s Turned to 11.” The top of his post has a photo “People mobbing a water delivery truck earlier today in New Delhi.” I wonder what life will be like, even in developed nations, when billions of people are this desperate which could happen this century with 3°C according to the UN Environment Programme “Emissions Gap Report 2023” unless we see radical cuts to carbon and methane emissions. My February 20, 2020 post cited sources used by Gregor Aisch from Datawrapper noting above 3°C “High risk of reversing of carbon cycle triggering runaway warming spiral. Droughts and famine for billions of people, leading to chaos and wars.”

Each investment now will mean less painful investment later.