Brilliant Suggestion of the Day

From Esquire, by Charles P. Pierce:

“Of course, the most lasting damage done by the Kochs is in the area of the climate crisis, in which their money and influence may have paralyzed the response to it until, now, things have gone past the point of control. It is in that spirit that I make the following proposal: If David Koch is to be cremated, I suggest we dispense with all the fuss and bother and just drop his corpse from a helicopter into the fires now consuming the Amazon rainforest. Let him be one with his legacy.”

 

Who Cares About the Environment When You Can “Own the Libs”?

Some Thoughts on Earth Day

By Nathaniel Rich, author of “Losing Earth”:

“Everything is changing about the natural world and everything must change about the way we conduct our lives. It is easy to complain that the problem is too vast, and each of us is too small. But there is one thing that each of us can do ourselves, in our homes, at our own pace — something easier than taking out the recycling or turning down the thermostat, and something more valuable. We can call the threats to our future what they are. We can call the villains villains, the heroes heroes, the victims victims and ourselves complicit. We can realize that all this talk about the fate of Earth has nothing to do with the planet’s tolerance for higher temperatures and everything to do with our species’ tolerance for self-delusion. And we can understand that when we speak about things like fuel-efficiency standards or gasoline taxes or methane flaring, we are speaking about nothing less than all we love and all we are.”

Tweet of the Day

 Colin Hanks @ColinHanks

If he’s so damn impressed with the swept floors of the forests of Finland someone tell him about their healthcare system.

What in the Hell is He Even Saying?

From CNN:

After touring some of the fire damage in Northern California, President Donald Trump was asked whether seeing the devastation changed his opinion on climate change.

“No, no I have a strong opinion. I want a great climate. We’re going to have that, and we are going to have that are very safe because we can’t go through this. Every year we go through this. We’re going to have safe forests and that’s happening as we speak,” he told reporters during a briefing at a command center in Chico, California. 

He reminds me of “Professor” Irwin Corey, World’s Foremost Authority and the master of double-talk.

Science, Schmience

From The New Yorker by Peter Kuper:

Duh

From the Washington Post:

WILMINGTON, N.C. — It took a giant laurel oak puncturing her roof during Hurricane Florence last month for Margie White to consider that perhaps there was some truth to all the alarm bells over global warming.

“I always thought climate change was a bunch of nonsense, but now I really do think it is happening,” said White, a 65-year-old Trump supporter, as she and her young grandson watched workers haul away downed trees and other debris lining the streets of her posh seaside neighborhood last week, just as Hurricane Michael made landfall 700 miles away in the Florida Panhandle.

It’s In the Genes, Except When It’s Not

Trump on climate change, from his AP interview:

AP: But scientists say this is nearing a point where this can’t be reversed.

Trump: No, no. Some say that and some say differently. I mean, you have scientists on both sides of it. My uncle was a great professor at MIT for many years. Dr. John Trump. And I didn’t talk to him about this particular subject, but I have a natural instinct for science, and I will say that you have scientists on both sides of the picture.

But We’re Only Thinking About the Grandchildren.

From New York Magazine:

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson has come under fire for purchasing a $31,000 dining set for his office, and misleading the public about his involvement in the decision. But, according to Jonathan Swan, chief of staff John Kelly today defended the purchase to reporters as a wise long-term investment:

Kelly said $31,000 sounds like a lot of money, but to put it in context he asked a reporter how much they think the chair they’re sitting on costs. Kelly said it’s probably worth hundreds of dollars but it will last a long time. He rationalized Carson’s $31,000 outlay by saying the table could last for 80 or 100 years.

Trump’s administration isn’t always big on long-term planning when it comes to things like climate change, where the 100-year picture is not exactly foremost on anybody’s mind. But at least they’re thinking long term about the executive dining needs of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Our grandchildren may lose some coastal cities we currently enjoy, but they can rest assured they will never need to fund another dining set for the HUD secretary.

 

Say What?

Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert today on CNN:

He said the Trump administration was mindful of predictions of future floods, and doesn’t want federal dollars used to rebuild structures that will come under increasing threat from rising sea levels.

“We continue to take seriously climate change — not the cause of it, but the things that we observe,” Bossert said.

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In other words, we recognize it’s happening, but we refuse to recognize why.

This is like the cigarette companies acknowledging people got lung cancer after years of smoking but it couldn’t possibly have been because of their product.