Windfarms 5, Gray Whales -? The Ocean is being sold to private interests who will sell you electricity.

Fifteen years ago I began this blog. The concern was that government was going to lease California's ocean to corporations to develop alternative electrical energy sources.

On Wednesday, August 1, 2007, the first post in this blog Limited Time Only - Act now to own your piece of the Pacific Ocean off the Mendocino Coast was offered. It addressed a plan to use "wave energy" generation systems to be placed in the Gray Whale Migration Route. In February 2012 an extensive post about the matter -The Cloud versus the Gray Whale - was offered.

The proposal disappeared from the news, much to my surprise. But guess what. Wind farm proposals were always on the horizon. 

Wind farms have been constructed along the Atlantic Coast. And as posted here May 29, 2021, Gray Whales threatened as Biden and Newsom push huge Pacific Coast wind farm developments.

Today the news headline is Going, going, gone: Feds hold first-ever auction for California offshore wind leases, an article that offers the summary:

    Several dozen companies are competing today for leases to build massive floating wind farms in deep ocean waters off Morro Bay and Humboldt County. The auction is the first major step toward producing offshore wind energy off the West Coast.

If you read the article you will learn that environmental opposition has been pushed aside in favor of economic expansion - in other words, electric energy for a constantly expanding world economy is all that really matters. Simply no one wants to give up electric devices including future electric powered modes of transport.

The fact is that very, very large wind generators are planned to be built This writer is of a generation that isn't going be able to address the problems that will inevitably result. Apparently no one else is either. Consider this from today's article:

    Brandon Southall, a scientist with the environmental group California Ocean Alliance and a research associate at UC Santa Cruz who studies the effects of noise on marine mammals, is performing a risk assessment on the lease areas for the federal government to assess how to avoid disruptions to endangered animals and noise-sensitive marine life.
    Despite the risks, Southall said they shouldn’t derail efforts to deploy the clean energy source given the severity of the climate crisis. He said it’s important that the federal and state governments develop a regulatory framework for companies to ensure they comply with environmental protections.

Simply put, as always Americans will sacrifice the environment and wildlife to generate electricity because we can't maintain our lifestyle without more devices. After all, you can get along without Gray Whales....

Let's be clear - per the new sixth annual IPPC report the behavior of people as expressed in civilization is the cause of the climate crisis.

The following was posted one year ago. The situation is worse today as generally indicated in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.

This week should have stimulated in this writer hope for the future of civilization. It has not.

The latest update in a new United Nations–led report from the International Panel on Climate Change prepared by hundreds of climate scientists around the world tells us the human-driven climate crisis is now well under way. Essentially civilization is in trouble.

Civilization as explained in Wikipedia refers to organized densely-populated human settlements divided into hierarchical social classes with a ruling elite and subordinate urban and rural populations, which engage in intensive agriculture, mining, small-scale manufacture and trade. Civilization concentrates power, extending human control over the rest of nature, including over other human beings.

Cultural critic and author Derrick Jensen argues that modern civilization is directed towards the domination of the environment and humanity itself in an intrinsically harmful, unsustainable, and self-destructive fashion. Defending his definition both linguistically and historically, he defines civilization as "a culture... that both leads to and emerges from the growth of cities", with "cities" defined as "people living more or less permanently in one place in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life". This need for civilizations to import ever more resources, he argues, stems from their over-exploitation and diminution of their own local resources. Therefore, civilizations inherently adopt imperialist and expansionist policies and, to maintain these, highly militarized, hierarchically structured, and coercion-based cultures and lifestyles.

In "Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire," the cultural historian Morris Berman writes that "up and down the scale in the United States, a lack of empathy, an almost congenital inability to imagine the pain or the reality of the Other, is bred in the bone." He refers to what he calls an "American hatred of freedom." And he asserts that "the value system of at least 90 percent of the American population (at a conservative estimate), down through the decades, has acted to exclude a number of options that are essential for a healthy society. On one level, one might say that America takes away love and gives its citizens gadgets in return, which most of them regard as a terrific bargain."

The reality is that Americans in positions of power have known for 40+ years that we would reach the current point of climate crisis. Of course, the scientists have to tell us that only a major reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions this decade can prevent climate breakdown, and that some changes may already be “irreversible.”

And, of course, those of us who live in the American created civilization know that is not true- there is absolutely no chance of a major reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions this decade.

The problem actually starts because of the human civilization described above by Morris Berman. More than one article about the new study begins with a summary denial of the truth about the source of the climate problem: "it’s caused by fossil fuels." Actually fossil fuels aren't down there under ground plotting how to get out into the sunlight, building refineries to refine themselves, then drive around in cars spewing carbon dioxide into the air. 

No. it's caused by human beings in a civilization that simply cannot survive as it currently exists.

The problem represented in the comic strip to the right as explained by artist KC Green as: "Well, what are you going to do?"

You cannot create a complex civilization without structure. The structure of the dominant 21st Century civilization places unrestrained wealth economics above all else.

Hence, the comparatively minor economic stress associated with the Covid shutdown created anger and aggravated feelings in favor of antivaccination.

The truth is the Covid pandemic gave the current population a chance,  by doing practically nothing (getting vaccinated), to reduce the danger for everyone (as understood by scientists). Anger and hostility was the result of pushing vaccination.

Imagine trying to envision such a civilization confronted with being told to cut carbon dioxide emissions in half by doing such things as riding a bus instead of driving. It is just easier to believe the chart below is a lie than to restructure how we live.

In 2007 the first post here was about the threat to climate and to Gray Whales. Two months ago the post was Gray Whales threatened as Biden and Newsom push huge Pacific Coast wind farm developments. Literally, the solution to the climate crisis being pushed in California by the Democrats in power is more electricity use while changing the generation of electricity from fossil fuels to other environmentally harmful sources. In the meantime, the LA Times offers Something is killing gray whales. Is it a sign of oceans in peril?

Actually, it is a sign that because of the structure of our civilization - the Earth as we know it - has begun and will continue to undergo severe climate changes that over a period of decades will force the destruction of the current civilization.

It would be nice to say we acknowledge that we clearly understand that the "human driven" climate crisis is the result of the behavior and lifestyle of people. Instead we talk about carbon dioxide emissions which come from fossil fuels, at most blaming vehicles avoiding any reference to the drivers and passengers who are the ones actively destroying the current climate.

In the 40+ years that we have known clearly we have a climate crisis we have pushed our civilization to be more dependent on climate-damaging behavior, not less so. In the process, we, the people, have caused a climate crisis.

Perhaps news sources like the LA Times and most others could start offering headlines that say "People are killing gray whales. Civilization has put oceans in peril." That's the truth even though telling it may result in a minor reduction in retail sales resulting in less income to the news industry which is totally contrary to the values of our civilization.

Extended Economic Distortion: It's Year 3 of ???

In a May 2, 2020, post here the term "Extended Economic Distortion" was introduced:

    In this writer's opinion, too many pundits talk about the economic situation in terms of a recession or even a depression. The problem is mankind has never before seen an economy like the economy of the first two decades of the 21st Century. So we have never seen a reaction to a radical pandemic-based shift during such an economy.
    The reaction is likely to lead to an Extended Economic Distortion, not a "great" recession or depression. Mistrust, a general sense of unease, is likely to be felt by most people. And the real meaning of "people" in this context is "consumers" whose spending drives the worldwide "consumer economy" which in the United States represents about 70% of economic activity.

On a May 7, 2020, I followed up with additional observations:

    Prognostications from some sources indicate that an economic recovery will begin by the second half of the year. More likely the Coronavirus Crisis will lead to an Extended Economic Distortion.
    ...By "distortion" it is meant that the entire political economy will be twisted out of shape, away from the expected direction.

In truth this writer, among hundreds of writers and commentators, failed to anticipate how the Extended Economic Distortion would flow because I like the others had "never seen a reaction to a radical pandemic-based shift during such an economy" in a multiyear pandemic with a rapidly evolving virus which had not been in the prognostications of 2020.

Nor was the U.S. consumer behavioral reaction to the lockdown anticipated.

In other words we didn't know anything useful for forecasting and we still don't.

We do think that someday the coronavirus will be able to be reclassified as endemic rather than pandemic. We also think that someday the hugely inflationary pandemic economy probably will reverse potentially leading to a recession or depression.

The difficulty is that medical science which quite rapidly created vaccines can follow closely the evolution of the virus. But it cannot exactly predict what evolutionary changes will come next.

And, of course, economists once again have proven that economics is not a "big picture" science but rather an art painted by informed guesses. In a June 20, 2020, post, renegade economist Kate Raworth was quoted from a pre-pandemic piece as follows:

     No one can deny it: economics matters. Its theories are the mother tongue of public policy, the rationale for multi-billion-dollar investments, and the tools used to tackle global poverty and manage our planetary home. Pity then that its fundamental ideas are centuries out of date yet still dominate decision-making for the future.
    Today’s economics students will be among the influential citizens and policymakers shaping human societies in 2050. But the economic mindset that they are being taught is rooted in the textbooks of 1950 which, in turn, are grounded in the theories of 1850. Given the challenges of the 21st century—from climate change and extreme inequalities to recurring financial crises—this is shaping up to be a disaster. We stand little chance of writing a new economic story that is fit for our times if we keep falling back on last-century’s economic storybooks.
    When I studied economics at university 25 years ago I believed it would empower me to help tackle humanity’s social and environmental challenges. But like many of today’s disillusioned students its disconnect from relevance and reality left me deeply frustrated. So I walked away from its theories and immersed myself in real-world economic challenges, from the villages of Zanzibar to the headquarters of the United Nations, and on to the campaign frontlines of Oxfam
    In the process I realized the obvious: that you can’t walk away from economics because it frames the world we inhabit, so I decided to walk back towards it and flip it on its head. What if we started economics with humanity’s goals for the 21st century, and then asked what economic mindset would give us half a chance of achieving them?

Of course, Raworth has continued to advocate her views within this current turmoil. In addition Climate Change factors came together this year to provide "in your face" evidence that it is already too late to avoid major weather impacts and extreme inequalities returning mass starvation in the third world.

It is not predictable what the turmoil within the Extended Economic Distortion will paint as a "big picture" but humans tend to become hopeless, then angry when they lose their new overpriced homes and/or cannot feed their families. This can lead to conflict and violence, and to the Mussolini's and Hitler's.

I don't know if it can lead to starting an "economics with humanity’s goals for the 21st century" then creating an economic mindset that "would give us half a chance of achieving them." It would require abandoning the economic theories of 1850 which prop up our current class and corporate structures and are protected by our governments - national, state and local. Along with dealing with Climate Change, that's a lot to dump on those born after 1980.

"Hot Helen" and "Scorching Sam" - naming and categorizing heat waves should be coming soon

Like hurricanes, heatwaves will soon be named.

Humans have been a bit slow to acknowledge the real threats of Climate Change. But we see today headlines in British newspapers like ‘Heat apocalypse’ warning in western France as thousands flee wildfire. 

In June we read In world's first, Spain's Seville to name and classify heatwaves. While here at home, if you read the article Heat waves could soon have names in June you would have learned

    Five other cities — Los Angeles; Miami; Milwaukee; Kansas City, Missouri; and Athens — have also started piloting a similar initiative, using weather data and public health criteria to categorize heat waves.
    They'll use a three-category system that organizers want to standardize. Each city's system will be tailored to its particular climate.
    A "category three" heat wave in L.A., for example, will look and feel quite different from the same designation in Milwaukee.

In California Assembly Bill 2238 was introduced in February to create and put a heat wave ranking system in place by Jan. 1, 2024. Recently amended in the Senate, there is a chance this bill will be adopted.

It's a fact that this comes quite late in California's attempt to deal with Climate Change and associated heatwaves and wildfires. But it is a reality that everyone seems to be behind. It was necessary for The Guardian to publish today the article Why is the UK so unprepared for extreme heat and what can be done? which had to include the following explanations:

    The stifling current heat is certainly attracting attention. But Bob Ward at the London School of Economics said: “More action is needed to inform the public about the dangers created by heatwave conditions. One part of the solution could be to name heatwaves in the same way that winter storms are now given names to gain the attention of the public.”
    [The University of Reading Prof Hannah] Cloke said: “We also need to have more sophisticated forecast-based warnings that are more focused on people. It shouldn’t just be about peak afternoon temperatures, even though these really are very high indeed.” They should also take into account other factors, such as humidity, and spell out the risk to people, she said: “Heatwaves are silent killers.”

"Heatwaves are silent killers." The PR problem is they tend to kill the poor, the infirm, and the old while solutions tend to negatively impact the Consumer Economy which benefits most everyone else and particularly corporate interests.

But apparently we will soon see a warning system evolve. Unfortunately, as I posted here in 2018: "Regarding Al Gore's campaign on climate policy beginning 40 years ago, he..., well, kids..., my generation failed him and you. But then I said that before...."

Climate Change Black Death: No, lithium production is not inherently an environmentally friendly way to the future

In Plans To Dig the Biggest Lithium Mine in the US Face Mounting Opposition you can learn about growing resistance to plans by Lithium America, mostly owned by China’s Ganfeng Lithium, the world’s largest producer of the element, to mine lithium at at Nevada's Thacker Pass.

    The opponents view lithium extraction as the latest gold rush, and fear that the desperation to abate the climate crisis is driving a race into avoidable environmental degradation. The flawed assumption behind the “clean energy transition,” they argue, is that it can maintain levels of consumption that are inherently unsustainable.
    “We want people to understand that ‘clean energy’ is not clean,” Max Wilbert, of the Protect Thacker Pass campaign, said. “We’re here because our allegiance is to the land. It’s not to cars. It’s not to high-energy, modern lifestyle. It’s to this place.”

The first thing we need to do is gain some perspective. The article notes:

    ...Despite the reduction in emissions that the widespread adoption of EVs would bring, the Center for Interdisciplinary Environmental Justice at the University of San Diego, an organization of concerned scientists who monitor harms to communities from mining, opposes the electrification of transportation. Their analysis shows that in order to stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide at 450 ppm by 2050—parts of gas per million parts of air—industrialized countries’ greenhouse gas emissions would have to decrease by 80 percent. Electric cars, the center’s researchers concluded, would achieve just 6 percent of that target, leading them to argue that driving electric vehicles is not a radical enough behavioral change to significantly slow climate change.

Of course,nothing about this is simple. But as we noted here in Climate Change Black Death surrounds us: Britain's "civilized debate" via lithium powered "devices" over solutions to the Climate Change crisis is fiddling while Rome (and the World) burns a similar dispute exists in California's Panamint Valley. The LA Times article included this video

Meanwhile at California's Salton Sea an alternative to mining is evolving:

This writer has pretty much given up discussing this subject area. In the first post here on August 2007 this writer first noted the problem with offshore wind generation along the Pacific Coast - the unknown and not yet discussed potential impact on Gray Whale migration. Additional posts have followed which can be reviewed here. The last post on the subject was Gray Whales threatened as Biden and Newsom push huge Pacific Coast wind farm developments.

The Democratic Party leadership are assuming a panicky demeanor regarding Climate Change. They should. It is literally not possible to avoid significant climate change impacts. And in what can only considered disturbing everyone - including scientists, politicians, and business leaders - only discuss impacts in terms of before the year 2100.

As noted here in The evolving 21st Century Promethean Calamity: "Implicatory" Climate Crisis Denial and Thunberg's GenZ demand to halt Climate Change Black Death Al Gore started telling us about this 45 years ago at age 28 after being elected to the United States House of Representatives and by 1989, 30 years ago, then U.S. Senator Al Gore, in frustration published an editorial in The Washington Post, in which he observed that people see their future welfare, their future well-being, one year at a time. 

In the Covid Crisis we learned that at least a third of our population see only their own household's future economic well-being, and even that at best one day at a time. That has effectively assured the sacrifice of the well-being of future generations.

As noted here in a previous post, in Elizabeth Kolbert's 2014 Pulitzer Prize winning book The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History she explains that the Earth is in the midst of a man-made sixth extinction, chronicling previous mass extinction events, and comparing them to the accelerated, widespread extinctions of our present time. In a July 2014 interview on The Daily Show with John Stewart promoting the book at the end they both acknowledge a kind of despair:

Perhaps we need to ask a question. Is it likely that the nation of humans that perfected world war will sacrifice any significant economic advantage to take on the climate problem?

Let's be clear - the behavior of people as expressed in civilization is the cause of the climate crisis

This week should have stimulated in this writer hope for the future of civilization. It has not.

The latest update in a new United Nations–led report from the International Panel on Climate Change prepared by hundreds of climate scientists around the world tells us the human-driven climate crisis is now well under way. Essentially civilization is in trouble.

Civilization as explained in Wikipedia refers to organized densely-populated human settlements divided into hierarchical social classes with a ruling elite and subordinate urban and rural populations, which engage in intensive agriculture, mining, small-scale manufacture and trade. Civilization concentrates power, extending human control over the rest of nature, including over other human beings.

Cultural critic and author Derrick Jensen argues that modern civilization is directed towards the domination of the environment and humanity itself in an intrinsically harmful, unsustainable, and self-destructive fashion. Defending his definition both linguistically and historically, he defines civilization as "a culture... that both leads to and emerges from the growth of cities", with "cities" defined as "people living more or less permanently in one place in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life". This need for civilizations to import ever more resources, he argues, stems from their over-exploitation and diminution of their own local resources. Therefore, civilizations inherently adopt imperialist and expansionist policies and, to maintain these, highly militarized, hierarchically structured, and coercion-based cultures and lifestyles.

In "Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire," the cultural historian Morris Berman writes that "up and down the scale in the United States, a lack of empathy, an almost congenital inability to imagine the pain or the reality of the Other, is bred in the bone." He refers to what he calls an "American hatred of freedom." And he asserts that "the value system of at least 90 percent of the American population (at a conservative estimate), down through the decades, has acted to exclude a number of options that are essential for a healthy society. On one level, one might say that America takes away love and gives its citizens gadgets in return, which most of them regard as a terrific bargain."

The reality is that Americans in positions of power have known for 40+ years that we would reach the current point of climate crisis. Of course, the scientists have to tell us that only a major reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions this decade can prevent climate breakdown, and that some changes may already be “irreversible.”

And, of course, those of us who live in the American created civilization know that is not true- there is absolutely no chance of a major reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions this decade.

The problem actually starts because of the human civilization described above by Morris Berman. More than one article about the new study begins with a summary denial of the truth about the source of the climate problem: "it’s caused by fossil fuels." Actually fossil fuels aren't down there under ground plotting how to get out into the sunlight, building refineries to refine themselves, then drive around in cars spewing carbon dioxide into the air. 

No. it's caused by human beings in a civilization that simply cannot survive as it currently exists.

The problem represented in the comic strip to the right as explained by artist KC Green as: "Well, what are you going to do?"

You cannot create a complex civilization without structure. The structure of the dominant 21st Century civilization places unrestrained wealth economics above all else.

Hence, the comparatively minor economic stress associated with the Covid shutdown created anger and aggravated feelings in favor of antivaccination.

The truth is the Covid pandemic gave the current population a chance,  by doing practically nothing (getting vaccinated), to reduce the danger for everyone (as understood by scientists). Anger and hostility was the result of pushing vaccination.

Imagine trying to envision such a civilization confronted with being told to cut carbon dioxide emissions in half by doing such things as riding a bus instead of driving. It is just easier to believe the chart below is a lie than to restructure how we live.

In 2007 the first post here was about the threat to climate and to Gray Whales. Two months ago the post was Gray Whales threatened as Biden and Newsom push huge Pacific Coast wind farm developments. Literally, the solution to the climate crisis being pushed in California by the Democrats in power is more electricity use while changing the generation of electricity from fossil fuels to other environmentally harmful sources. In the meantime, the LA Times offers Something is killing gray whales. Is it a sign of oceans in peril?

Actually, it is a sign that because of the structure of our civilization - the Earth as we know it - has begun and will continue to undergo severe climate changes that over a period of decades will force the destruction of the current civilization.

It would be nice to say we acknowledge that we clearly understand that the "human driven" climate crisis is the result of the behavior and lifestyle of people. Instead we talk about carbon dioxide emissions which come from fossil fuels, at most blaming vehicles avoiding any reference to the drivers and passengers who are the ones actively destroying the current climate.

In the 40+ years that we have known clearly we have a climate crisis we have pushed our civilization to be more dependent on climate-damaging behavior, not less so. In the process, we, the people, have caused a climate crisis.

Perhaps news sources like the LA Times and most others could start offering headlines that say "People are killing gray whales. Civilization has put oceans in peril." That's the truth even though telling it may result in a minor reduction in retail sales resulting in less income to the news industry which is totally contrary to the values of our civilization.

Bemoaning the loss of the Mythic California Dream: How can so many not know what Steinbeck knew?

    The California Dream is the psychological motivation to gain fast wealth or fame in a new land. As a result of the California Gold Rush after 1849, California's name became indelibly connected with the Gold Rush, and fast success in a new world became known as the "California Dream". California was perceived as a place of new beginnings, where great wealth could reward hard work and good luck. ...Overnight, California gained the international reputation as the "golden state"—with gold and lawlessness the main themes. - from Wikipedia

A curious narrative is being reported and repeated in news stories such as The California Dream Is Dying offered in The Atlantic. No, the "California Dream" is not dying. It is a 170-year-old myth sold to gullible people. As further explained in that Wikipedia entry:

    Generations of immigrants have been attracted by the California Dream. California farmers, oil drillers, movie makers, aerospace corporations and "dot-com" entrepreneurs have each had their boom times in the decades after the Gold Rush.
    Part of the "California Dream" was "that every family could have its own private home."
    As historian Kevin Starr has pointed out, for many if not most migrants to the golden state, "the dream outran the reality." The Okies of the 1930s "found their California dream transformed into a nightmare,' notes Walter Stein. As a result, "the California Dream is a love affair with an idea, a marriage to a myth."

If you read John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath you get a good picture of the disappointment experienced by The Okies of the 1930's. But his other writings make clear that the current climate "change" called a drought is a good example of the myth as explained in 2017 here in Foolish planning and the inevitable wildfires: What could have been learned from John Steinbeck about California's true climate. That post expanded on a 2014 post To A God Unknown: Steinbeck, Stine, and Medieval California. Both those were based on what Steinbeck wrote in his 1933 novel To A God Unknown. But the following from East of Eden offers a direct view of California's climate:

Now the problem is exacerbated with something we have labeled "Climate Change" which for California means even drier made more disastrous fires because too many people live in California.

And a significant part of California's wealth is large agriculture dependent entirely on a water supply propped up by federal and state facilities, all of which is collapsing around us as the reservoirs go dry.

The drought is just one piece of the myth gone wrong. There is the the 20th Century housing myth.

Yes, we did have a huge housing boom after WWII. But it wasn't something that just happened. Compounding the California Dream myth, the federal government established funding mechanisms for building thousands of new homes to be purchased by people who would not have otherwise been able to afford them at the time. This was done through loan guarantees from the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration. From Wikipedia:

    During the Great Depression many banks failed, causing a drastic decrease in home loans and ownership. At that time, most home mortgages were short-term (three to five years), with no amortization, and balloon instruments at loan-to-value (LTV) ratios below sixty percent.[4] This prevented many working and middle-class families from being able to afford home ownership. The banking crisis of the 1930s forced all lenders to retrieve due mortgages; refinancing was not available, and many borrowers, now unemployed, were unable to make mortgage payments. Consequently, many homes were foreclosed, causing the housing market to plummet. Banks collected the loan collateral (foreclosed homes) but the low property values resulted in a relative lack of assets.
    In 1934 the federal banking system was restructured. The National Housing Act of 1934 created the Federal Housing Administration. Its intention was to regulate the rate of interest and the terms of mortgages that it insured; however, the new practices were restricted only to white Americans. These new lending practices increased the number of white Americans who could afford a down payment on a house and monthly debt service payments on a mortgage, thereby also increasing the size of the market for single-family homes.
    Since 1934, the FHA and HUD have insured almost 50 million home mortgages. Currently, the FHA has approximately 8.5 million insured single family mortgage, more than 11,000 insured multifamily mortgages, and over 3,900 mortgages for hospitals and residential care facilities in its portfolio.

This is what many think is the California Dream - housing funded by a federal program. Much like the Gold Rush, it was a myth-expanding reality though the federal government action did make far more new Californians "richer" than the Gold Rush did. And then those Californians adopted Proposition 13 putting a fence around their federally created wealth.

If you reread the first quote in this post you will note that "gold and lawlessness" were the main themes of the California Dream. Gold has been replaced, apparently by bitcoin, but lawlessness (defined as "being without law; uncontrolled by a law; unbridled; unruly; unrestrained") continues in the technology boom.

Probably more of the critical narrative appearing in print today is that folks migrating into California are not finding the economic promise of the Mythic California Dream. Housing? If you do a little research you will learn that in the 20th Century a multitude of cities were incorporated in California within which thousands of those federally funded homes were built. That incorporation of new cities stopped in 2000. The reason is simple - new cities must be allocated natural resources that are not available because there aren't enough to support even the existing economic structure.

Fact - 35 years ago Californians were warned of a 9° climate temperature increase within this Century

In Christopher Nolan’s science fiction film, Interstellar, set in the year 2067, the first few minutes of the film consists of interviews by survivors of an apocalyptic dust bowl. Those scenes are in fact are from a Ken Burn's documentary, real interview clips of actual survivors from the Dust Bowl which nearly destroyed the middle "Red States" of the United States in the 1930s. The Dust Bowl was the result of decades of individuals acting with full encouragement of the government in a time when we had no "climate scientists." Today Americans, particularly those living in the same "Dust Bowl" states, continue to behave in a similar fashion ignoring climate science, even to the point of assuring their government abandons their grandchildren to a disastrous future.

Beginning in posts here in 2011, the impacts on our grandchildren of governmental policy failures became the term used to create context about our failures as a people.

If you follow climate news you know the a heat dome impacted California and the Pacific Northwest last month. Firefighters battled 44 large wildfires that have burned nearly 700,000 acres. One of the coldest inhabited places on the planet, Verkhoyansk, Siberia, the land surface temperature was 118 degrees. And these are not isolated events:

Katharine Hayhoe, a 49-year-old climate scientist at Texas Tech University and chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy, noted “These extremes are something we knew were coming, the suffering that is here and now is because we have not heeded the warnings sufficiently.”

Hayhoe was only 14 when Congressional leaders first began reciting, repeating, warnings of impending climate change.

Indeed, the "alarmist" headline read "ACTION IS URGED TO AVERT GLOBAL CLIMATE SHIFT." Of course that was 35 years ago in a December 1985 New York Times article that told us:

    "Scientists have warned that carbon dioxide, from the burning of fossil fuels, and other man-made gases, such as methane and chlorofluorocarbons, are accumulating in the atmosphere. These gases trap in the earth's atmosphere solar infrared radiation that would otherwise escape back into space. Projections based on mathematical models indicate the average temperature at the surface of the earth, starting by the end of this century, could increase by as much as 9 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100."

Elements of the post that follows appeared here previously, but given the recent climate "warming" impacts we need to be certain that readers be given the opportunity to consider its message.

Because agencies of the United States government and the Chinese government recently have accepted as inevitable a near-maximum catastrophic impact from Climate Change, the subject must be taken up again. The May 2018 Chinese study, which corresponds to the July official projections accepted and published by the Trump Administration, is unequivocal.

Of course, almost no living person in the Baby Boom generation (or older) will be alive to experience the full catastrophic impact even in the earliest year of the Chinese models - 2064. And at least half of the Gen X generation will be gone before the Chinese model's "most likely" full catastrophic impact year - 2084.

That means Climate Change is still a somewhat abstract concept to the generations of people who voted in the greatest percentages in the latest elections - excluding those who died from the recent heat. And too many of them keep telling themselves it is a lie as they try to figure out how to stay in their home until they die, in many cases despite regular flooding or wildfires or both.

And by "them" I must include "me" because as I wrote in 2016 Al Gore's campaign on climate policy beginning "40 years ago, he..., well, kids..., my generation failed him and you." 

We have already changed the world catastrophically

As explained in a previous post here, Elizabeth Kolbert is a Pulitzer Prize winning author who has won many awards for her extensive writings on Climate Change. In that post a quote from the 2015 update to her 2006 Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change summed up the situation (emphasis added):

     In the years since I wrote this book I’ve been asked hundreds of variations on the question: “What should I do?” What people seem to be looking for is both advice on concrete actions they can take and the assurance that what they do will make a difference. Given the paralysis of the political system, the time lag built into the climate system, and the high likelihood that the threshold of DAI [dangerous anthropogenic interference] has now been crossed, it’s difficult to offer such assurances. We have already changed the world dramatically, indeed quite probably catastrophically. But even when it comes to catastrophe, distinctions can be made. What we choose to do—or not to do—in the coming decades will determine the future both for our own kind and for the millions of other species with whom we share this planet. It is possible that we could still limit warming to around two degrees Celsius, and it is also possible that we could lock in warming of six degrees Celsius or more. These two possibilities represent radically different worlds.

In her 2014 Pulitzer Prize winning book The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History she explains that the Earth is in the midst of a man-made sixth extinction, chronicling previous mass extinction events, and comparing them to the accelerated, widespread extinctions of our present time. In a July 2014 interview on The Daily Show with John Stewart promoting the book at the end they both acknowledge a kind of despair:

Unfortunately, in 2018 in both the U.S. and China formal findings have been made that we have "locked in warming" of 4°± Celsius most likely within 60 years.

Under the direction of the Trump Administration the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) with the cooperation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) issued aDraft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule for Model Year 2021–2026 Passenger Cars and Light Trucks proposing reduced average fuel economy standards for those vehicles.

The DEIS has determined that the draft official policy of the United States government will be acceptance of a near worst case scenario, a 4.387°C (7.876°F) global temperature rise since 1880 by 2100. That is because any lesser scenario would require deep cuts in carbon emissions to avoid this drastic warming. A lesser scenario “would require substantial increases in technology innovation and adoption compared to today’s levels...which is not currently technologically feasible or economically feasible.”

In May 2018 a collaborative research team from China published a new analysis that shows the Earth's climate would increase by 4 °C, compared to pre-industrial levels, most likely by 2084. They found that most of the models projected an increase of 4°C as early as 2064 and as late as 2095, with 2084 appearing as the median year.

"Our ultimate goal is to provide a comprehensive picture of the mean and extreme climate changes associated with higher levels of global warming based on state-of-the art climate models, which is of high interest to the decision-makers and the public," said Dabang Jiang, a senior researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Perhaps some would want to dismiss both government agencies as being too pessimistic. The problem is in 1995, now 26 years ago, then Vice-President Gore reflected on his experienced reality in a 1995 New York Times article:

    "We are in an unusual predicament as a global civilization," Al Gore said when I interviewed him early in his Vice Presidency. "The maximum that is politically feasible, even the maximum that is politically imaginable right now, still falls short of the minimum that is scientifically and ecologically necessary."

In other words, as Kobert outlined in The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History various species have already gone extinct. Others are adapting, doing things like moving to higher elevations. But they haven't experienced anything close to the impacts of an increase of 4°C which will strain every species including humans.

All of which should lead us back 90 years to the Dust Bowl Era pictured at the beginning of this post.

In his 1933 novel To A God Unknown, John Steinbeck tells an allegorical tale of the California experience. The protagonist, Joseph, comes to California to create his future. He discovers a place of apparent wealth and promise. And indeed he appears to be achieving all that he dreams. But over time, tragedies strike and a drought undoes his life work.

Late 19th and early 20th Century immigrants to Californian hadn't read To A God Unknown. Instead they believed that water was an endless resource of wealth for future Californians. Unfortunately that wasn't true. It was Johnny Carson who observed that California has four seasons: Fire, Earthquake, Flood, and Drought. But mid-20th Century Californians didn't hear that.

Lands that once were orchards in Southern California. the San Francisco Peninsula, and Santa Clara County, and farms in the Central Valley became subdivisions of housing for large populations, urban/suburban populations that were now dependent upon that water for human consumption competing with the remaining agricultural interests. In 2009 the Southern San Joaquin Valley became the first area in the State to suffer significantly from the return of centuries of drought that received intermittent decades of relief.

No one can say we weren't warned.

We are deep into a climate crisis age of extinction. Read all about it from a reliable news source.

One certain effect of climate change is the accelerated extinction of plant and animal species.

As Wikipedia explains: "A species is extinct when the last existing member dies. Extinction therefore becomes a certainty when there are no surviving individuals that can reproduce and create a new generation. A species may become functionally extinct when only a handful of individuals survive, which cannot reproduce due to poor health, age, sparse distribution over a large range, a lack of individuals of both sexes (in sexually reproducing species), or other reasons."

Homo sapiens sapiens, aka humans, are animals, of course. Since more than 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth, amounting to over five billion species,  have become extinct, it is reasonable to expect that humans will become extinct.

Still, many of us are troubled by the fact that humans are the cause of the current rapid climate change that has accelerated the extinction of plant and animal species creating a condition known as "mass extinction." 

A 1998 survey of biologists conducted by New York's American Museum of Natural History supported the prediction that up to 20% of all living populations could become extinct within 20 years, seven years from now. It appears that prediction will be exceeded.

In a 2020 study Vertebrates on the brink as indicators of biological annihilation and the sixth mass extinction it was noted that a study of 29,400 species of terrestrial vertebrates found that the human-caused sixth mass extinction is likely accelerating, emphasizing the "extreme urgency of taking massive global actions to save humanity’s crucial life-support systems."

For those who may be interested, The Guardian, a non-profit British newspaper founded in 1821, has a grant-supported project - The Age of Extinction - focused on biodiversity highlighting the crisis represented by huge losses of animal, insect, bird and plant life around the world, exploring innovations attempting to slow these losses.

The Guardian is free (you may but need not donate). They do report on other news. In terms of its political orientation, it is left of center. And it is true that British, and American, and Chinese, and whatever national governments and private corporations have determined to delay significant action regarding climate change.

But now that Donald Trump is no longer President, perhaps more will find things like the problem of preventing the end of human life interesting.

This writer certainly recommends it as an alternative to Twitter, et al.

What happens when the much vaunted "center" of a "new world order" withdraws creating a vacuum

In human history all dominate cultures have fallen. In the past decade many have been writing that the world leadership by the U.S. has declined or even collapsed. It's complicated, but also true in the sense that the United States is no longer the "center" of a "new world order."

New World Order

As historically used, the term "new world order" refers to a leadership transition in collective efforts to identify, understand, and/or address global problems that go beyond the capacity of the peoples of individual nation-states to solve. The term was used at the end of both World War I and II with the United States appearing to be the hope for the world. 

European culture, with an emphasis on Great Britain's empire, was the center of a new world order as the United States evolved. The U.S. in the second half of the 20th Century assumed that "center" mantle. At the very time that the U.S. seemed to have assured its place with the fall of the Soviet Union, in fact it turns out it was the end of the Eurocentric world.

The term "new world order" was most recently used at the end of the Cold War.

After the election March 11, 1985, of Mikhail Gorbachev to the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the process of dissolution of the Soviet Union was begun. Prior to that time, the United States and the Soviet Union dominated the world order. In five years, the change was clear as noted by U.S. President George H. W. Bush:

We stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment. The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective—a new world order—can emerge: a new era—freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, East and West, North and South, can prosper and live in harmony. A hundred generations have searched for this elusive path to peace, while a thousand wars raged across the span of human endeavor. Today that new world is struggling to be born, a world quite different from the one we've known. A world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. A world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak.

    - President George H.W. Bush, September 11, 1990, Address Before a Joint Session of Congress

Unfortunately, Bush was a bit ahead of the curve thinking there would be a future of peace, freedom and justice as he did not recognize the shadow cast by the self-centered arrogance endemic to the American people. The historical period of 1918-1922 should have represented a warning that just as the U.S. effectively abandoned the League of Nations ultimately causing WWII, there was little chance the the American political scene would shift to support a unanimous unselfish group leadership role.

The irony should not be lost that Bush's speech was given 11 years to the day before his son as President would face what we know as 9/11 leading to a another two decades of war initiated by the United States.

In fact, beginning in 1980 the U.S. electorate shifted politically back to the post-WWI Republican capitalist greed era by electing Ronald Reagan. Reagan clearly stated his philosophy in 1964 while campaigning for Barry Goldwater in  his famous speech, "A Time for Choosing":

The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing ... You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream—the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order—or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.

The Clinton and Obama Presidencies remained focused on maintaining the wealth of the American 1% through corporate support in the international arena.

The high risk factor ignored was that most of the world's population was located outside the U.S. and half the U.S. population was becoming uneasy with the decline in their share, small as it was, in the growing wealth.

That led to the election of Donald Trump, a millionaire who touted a populist-image aimed at the gullible half of the U.S. population that had grown uneasy with the decline in their share. Trump pulled the U.S. out of international financial and other agreements which pretty much ended the world's love for American democracy.

The truth is that world power was centered on European economic power in the 19th Century and on U.S. economic power in the 20th Century.

Today in terms of economic power, the focus is rapidly shifting away from the 20th Century inherited European-American North Atlantic focus bequested to the U.S. by Britain. 

Recent events have assured an Asian-Pacific focus with expanding African and European participation, all through international agreements. This is no accident. The world's population is roughly 7.8 billion with 4.6 billion living in Asia,  2.82 billion of whom live in China and India. Africa has another 1.4 billion. So far, another 250 million folks in Pacific Rim nations Australia, Canada, Chile, Mexico, New Zealand, and Peru have signed on.

While the United States coped with Trumpist shifts away from internationalism, Great Britain withdrew from the European Union and is now just beginning to discover the negative economic effects of Brexit.

Are we prepared for this? To date the only President born in a Pacific Coast state, Richard Nixon, is also the only President to have made any significant positive move in our history to recognize the importance of Asia.

Yes, Donald Trump left office creating internal turmoil in his wake. The electorate did anoint Joe Biden to replace him. But in terms of creating a role for the U.S. in a new world order, Biden faces major problems as (1) a significant bloc of the U.S. electorate opposes economic participation in world organizations and (2) most of the world's nations, in reaction to Trump, effectively have moved on leaving the U.S. as just one more player in world affairs, and not a very reliable one at that.

Those two facts alone represent major hurdles for the U.S. But they aren't even where the focus must be right now.

The Pandemic, Climate Change, and Cyberspace Vulnerability

President Joe Biden assumes office at the beginning of the third decade of the Second Millennium A.D. facing a world that easily can be distinguished from the 20th Century world.

Biden and humanity are confronting the immediate problems of...

• a pandemic from a new disease, 
• climate change, and 
• sophisticated cyberattacks within a new theater of war called cyberspace, 

...all of which involve a leadership failure of the United States as a political entity during the first two decades of the Millennium.

Regarding the Covid-19 Pandemic, in the U.S. we have had 24,000,000+ cases and 400,000+ deaths in a year. 

Is this a real problem? For comparison in 2020, an estimated 1,806,590 new cases of cancer will have been diagnosed and 606,520 people will die from cancer. Regarding the flu, for which we have vaccines, annually in the last decade we have had between 9 million - 45 million illnesses, between 140,000 - 810,000 hospitalizations and between 12,000 - 61,000 deaths.

In terms of behavioral deaths, there were 36,096 fatalities in motor vehicle accidents and 15,292 people were fatally shot in 2019.

We should have been on top of the Covid-19 pandemic in January 2020 basically isolating the United States from the world and recommending everyone else do it also. But that is just not our way, ultimately letting us know that some day we will suffer major losses setting us back economically a century or more. But as we all know that will happen to someone else.

Based on available data, it is reasonable to expect recurrent Covid-19 epidemics as strains mutate. Other than the obvious impact on individuals, this has significantly altered our economy. But as seen from the statistics above, we've decided to coexist with disease and related economic impacts.

Regarding the second major U.S. policy failure impacting the economy, Climate Change, by 1960 research was telling us we had a problem as explained in Wikipedia:

By the late 1950s, more scientists were arguing that carbon dioxide emissions could be a problem, with some projecting in 1959 that CO2 would rise 25% by the year 2000, with potentially "radical" effects on climate. In the centennial of the American oil industry in 1959, organized by the American Petroleum Institute and the Columbia Graduate School of Business, Edward Teller said "It has been calculated that a temperature rise corresponding to a 10 per cent increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge New York. [....] At present the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by 2 per cent over normal. By 1970, it will be perhaps 4 per cent, by 1980, 8 per cent, by 1990, 16 per cent if we keep on with our exponential rise in the use of purely conventional fuels.". In 1960 Charles David Keeling demonstrated that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere was in fact rising. Concern mounted year by year along with the rise of the "Keeling Curve" of atmospheric CO2.

In terms of political awareness, we can point to Al Gore. In 1976, after joining the United States House of Representatives, Al Gore held the first congressional hearings on the climate change, and co-sponsored hearings on toxic waste and global warming. 

As explained in a previous post, Gore's subsequent presentation, movie, and book about Global Warming is entitled rather ironically "An Inconvenient Truth" precisely because as explained by Greta Thunberg "at a deep level, the language of climate denialism is tied up with a form of masculine identity predicated on modern industrial capitalism." The basic truth of the situation is economically very inconvenient and therefore politically very inconvenient. The American electoral system, not the majority of voters, defeated Al Gore for President in 2000 partly, or mostly, for that reason.

Simply, 1960 was 60 years ago. It is too late to avoid many climate catastrophes. As explained in a recent article:

    “The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms – including humanity – is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts,” they write in a report in Frontiers in Conservation Science which references more than 150 studies detailing the world’s major environmental challenges.
    The delay between destruction of the natural world and the impacts of these actions means people do not recognise how vast the problem is, the paper argues. “[The] mainstream is having difficulty grasping the magnitude of this loss, despite the steady erosion of the fabric of human civilisation.”

Nonetheless, Joe Biden has indicated a significant shift towards addressing climate change which offers some hope.

The third major U.S. economic policy failure is Cyberspace Vulnerability. Several facts need to be understood:

• "Cyberspace" has numerous meanings within the world of the arts, but ultimately came to reference a widespread, interconnected digital technology associated with the internet which has no single centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage that began in the 1960s with the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United States Department of Defense funded research into time-sharing of computers; in other words, it was created by the United States DOD.
• In 2013 Edward Snowden released a bunch of information about what the NSA was doing as noted in an extensive article in The Guardian (if you haven't read it you should); simply the U.S. was engaging in far reaching clandestine cyber espionage the disclosure of which resulted in a furor among U.S. allies, but did not actually restrict NSA activities, leaving the United States government as the largest single organization on Earth invading the privacy of individual human beings, individual businesses, and foreign governments, both within an international scope and within the United States.
• Because in the 1980's internet development was turned over to the private sector, clandestine spying is rampant; specific to politics you might remember the name Cambridge Analytica in relationship to both privacy invasion and Russian interference issues related to the election of Donald Trump because the company was paid at least $650,000 for voter data analysis and digital video; however, American corporate cyberspace spying has led to the establishment of  similar clandestine programs which have allowed both public and private sector interference in American affairs.

In summary American Cyberspace Vulnerability is entirely the fault of American worship of greed and power. Unlike nuclear weapons, no effective international restrictions exist today to protect cyberspace nor can they be instituted. 

Instead, the incoming Biden Administration must determine what, if any, data should be sealed from outside access and then figure out how to make that happen given the widespread existence within "the cloud" of elements of critical data.

In the meantime, we know that the ability to mess with elections is out there. But we also know that the ability of nations to shut down and damage utilities such as electricity, gas, and communications in other nations is a reality.

It is no small irony that most "smart" phones, including all critical components, are manufactured in Asia. This is also true of most electronics. It is the world a greedy United States created thumbing its nose at government. It will not be easy to undo.

The Next Eight Decades

Consider the following very recent observation:

    Most great empires, Arnold Toynbee once argued, end by committing suicide rather than being murdered.
    But with their exceptionalism and profound myopia, Americans think they are exempt from history’s merciless fate. They won’t be. There are four areas in which Americans have reigned supreme from the second half of the last century: the military, the capitalist financial system, medicine and disease control, and democratic institutions.
    In every one of them, signs of decay and decline abound.

The article the above quote is from should be read by all Americans. Unfortunately, it will be read by nearly none.

It is highly unlikely that the United States will be the "center" of a "new world order." It may turn out that George H.W. Bush was right when he said 30 years ago:

Today that new world is struggling to be born, a world quite different from the one we've known. A world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. A world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak.

It could be humans will make the necessary decisions creating such a world. But the nature of that world will rest in the heads and hearts of those who over the next 80 years consider is the nature of freedom and justice and what should be the focus of attention. In that context the U.S. ended up with 80±-year-old political leaders. Aren't we the generation who created the mess we're in? Well, not exactly!

The only appointed high official to serve a full four years in the Trump years, 57-year-old Mike Pompeo, was appointed by Trump as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency in January 2017 and promoted to secretary of state in March 2018 after Trump fired Rex Tillerson who reportedly called Trump a moron.  

Pompeo appears to have successfully completed the early 21st Century redefining of China as an enemy of American capitalism. As noted here in 2019 Pompeo is a Koch Brothers believer (as is Mike Pence):

There is no question that the Koch conservative right sees China as the one serious threat to unfettered capitalism and Pompeo has worked diligently to focus American military and foreign policy on that enemy. It's relatively simple equation - capitalism and communism are arch enemies. 

Confronted with Pompeo's Koch viewpoint, China's President Xi has refocused China's military on the very real U.S. threat while continuing to move forward with China's long term economic plans.

Make no mistake about it, freedom and justice are not defined by the Chinese in any way similar to American definitions. On the other hand, China is preparing its 14th Five Year Plan and 2035 Vision, a key marker of Xi’s national rejuvenation project to build a "prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful" modern socialist country by 2049. The core goal is to give the nation's people freedom from economic worry.

The Koch oil company empire notwithstanding, what do 340 million Americans living in a politically divided country that has a 250 year history really think about 1.44 billion Chinese living in a country that has a 4000 year history of centralized rule? Are there any thoughts about China planning an economy for it's children and grandchildren?

And, of course, what exactly is the national plan for mediating the impact of climate change on the American people?

This is the beginning of Joe Biden's term. It's quite a challenge.

No, this election did not reaffirm Climate Change policy - it emphasized how far apart Americans are

“Joe Biden’s win ratifies what’s been clear all along: despite Trump’s best efforts, the American people have remained committed to the Paris agreement. Business, investors, cities, and states redoubled their efforts to solve the climate crisis, proving that the path to a sustainable economy is inevitable,” said former vice president Al Gore in a statement Saturday.

On Monday the The Washington Post notified us that Trump officials rush to auction off rights to Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before Biden can block it.

President-elect Joe Biden has indicated that he will be undoing the Trump Executive Orders that reversed many U.S. Climate Change policies, such as withdrawing from the Paris Agreement.

Of course, Climate Action Tracker, a research project, projects that current Paris Agreement policies and pledges will leave the planet “well above” the Paris accord’s “long-term temperature goal.” Even with the U.S. involved, academics were concerned that the world was headed for “extensive” species extinctions, serious crop damage and irreversible increases in sea levels.

Trump called the Paris Agreement “a total disaster for our country” that would hurt American competitiveness by enabling “a giant transfer of American wealth to foreign nations that are responsible for most of the word’s pollution.” He says rules and directives put in place by his predecessor, Barack Obama, to meet the U.S. targets for emissions hurt the U.S. economy by killing jobs related to fossil fuels, especially coal mining. And he’s dismantled Obama-era regulations meant to stifle greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, automobiles and oil wells.

During the Trump Administration coal company executives have successfully advocated for rollbacks of more than 15 different environmental rules and protections. These wide-ranging rollbacks include actions repealing and replacing the Clean Power Plan and slashing the EPA’s budget and staff numbers.

In case someone didn't notice, nearly half of Americans voted for Trump. And, unless by some miracle the Democrats win both Georgia Senate seats in January, current U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will continue to control the Senate as he was reelected for six years with 57.8% of the vote. 

He's from Kentucky, a coal state.

Also from coal states are Republicans  John Barrasso (Wyo.) and Shelley Moore Capito (WVa.) who probably will Chair the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works respectively.

Barrasso was not up for reelection but is acutely aware that conservative Republican Cynthia Marie Lummis Wiederspahn won Wyoming's other Senate seat with 73.1% of the vote. 

Capito was up for reelection and won with 70.4% of the vote. 

The two committees they probably will chair have say over whom Biden puts in top-level positions at the EPA and other agencies plus can make Biden's life difficult on achieving his goals to “transition” away from using oil and reduce or eliminate fossil fuel subsidies.

But we all know he will have strong support from a super-majority of Americans, right? I've seen headlines saying that. Of course even that isn't quite so simple. Consider this chart:

Half of Americans do recognize that moderating human induced Climate Change (Global Warming) will do good things. But do they recognize that it would require behavior modification, a fact not included in the survey? This "favorable" half of respondents includes:

• those who have already made strides in modifying their behavior to benefit the future climate - we all know of at least one such person, though it may be the same such person;
• those who are thinking about modifying their behavior to benefit the future climate, but have not yet accepted the truth that they must alter their standard of living; and
• those who think it is the responsibility of only governments, corporations, non-profit organizations, etc., to change their organizational behaviors while continuing to meet the public's market demands, which will solve all the climate problems.

The other half appears to includes:

• those who don't believe in the Climate Change concept;
• those who believe that Climate Change either is the inevitable will of, or will be resolved by, a god;
• those who see a potential profit to be derived from resulting economic shifts caused by continuing Climate Change;
• those who see that any solutions needed must come from creative individual Americans acting on their own, not constrained by organizational prejudices and boundaries nor institutional rules nor finances.

As noted in a post here in June 2019 U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo explains the conservative "old deal" to address Climate Change:

[U.S. Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo explained that we Americans will...

• responsively reorganize our society,
• relocate as needed, and
• rely on future technological innovation

...instead of developing governmental policy as suggested in House Resolution 109 - Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal and creating the bureaucracy needed to implement it.

Is Pompeo correct in his assumptions?

About 68% of adults and 85% of Democrats surveyed in 2019, as indicated in the survey above, believe that policies designed to reduce the impacts of Climate Change would help or make no difference to the economy. But when you view the answers in another way, 65% of adults including 51% of democrats believe the policies would hurt or make no difference.

Make no difference. Really? When you dig down, you can't help but note that 38% of Democrats think the policies would make no difference. That's pretty much saying "I haven't given it any thought."

Perhaps we need to recognize context in which the Pew Survey was conducted. Americans have diddled around with electric cars while increasing manufacturing of gas guzzling vehicles. Californians have substantially increased solar and wind energy production while increasing consumption of electricity way beyond that production.

Interestingly, the Covid pandemic has reduced some consumption and a lot of driving. One could offer the idea that we could build on those gains as the pandemic effects decline. But that is a supposition offered in a severely stressed economy.

Perhaps we need to restate what Pompeo asserted. In response to Climate Change in the future individual Americans and their families will out of necessity...

• responsively reorganize our society, 
• relocate as needed, and 
• rely on future technological innovation 

...without significantly modifying U.S. government policy or bureaucracy.

Will American families rely on future technological innovation to deal with the impacts of Climate Change? Most assuredly. They already are, though much of what is available is expensive forcing many to divert their income to keep their homes livable.

Will American families relocate to deal with the impacts of Climate Change? Many won't have any choice and indeed they already are, though not enthusiastically. After all they will be relocating from the coastlines. And because of increasing desert heat they will be relocating from where they just relocated to, the Southwest.

Will individual Americans responsively reorganize our society to deal with Climate Change impacts? Hmmm.... 

Al Gore tells us that business, investors, cities, and states have redoubled their efforts to solve the climate crisis. What he also tells us is that the path to a sustainable economy will be an inevitable outcome of the changes required to solve the climate crisis. So I guess he still believes that Americans will responsively reorganize our society to deal with Climate Change impacts, even though he has been advocating for significant changes since the mid-1970's.

In fact, except for excluding any significant change in governmental policy and bureaucracy, Gore and Pompeo agree.

I'm not sure what we can learn from the Saturday story Garbage, duck feces and continued water woes for flooded South Florida in which is the quote from a resident: “I’ve never seen anything like this before. My home got flooded with water, poop — it’s just horrible.”

The warnings have been made. In September 2019 Bloomberg reported:

    The Great Climate Retreat is beginning with tiny steps, like taxpayer buyouts for homeowners in flood-prone areas from Staten Island, New York, to Houston and New Orleans — and now Rittel’s Marathon Key. Florida, the state with the most people and real estate at risk, is just starting to buy homes, wrecked or not, and bulldoze them to clear a path for swelling seas before whole neighborhoods get wiped off the map.
    By the end of the century, 13 million Americans will need to move just because of rising sea levels, at a cost of $1 million each, according to Florida State University demographer Mathew Haeur, who studies climate migration.

If you read the article, you will learn that some government funding has been focused on homeowner relocation costs. But this does not address issues such as extreme heat in the Southwest or burning forests across the U.S.

The problem for Biden is that when you look at the election results and Climate Change surveys honestly, Americans are not ready for the inevitable Climate Change impacts. We're still struggling with the economic impacts of technology - no, not the presence of Alexa in many homes, rather the fact that a large number of Americans can't afford Alexa. Or even a high speed internet connection in many cases.

To put it another way, there are two Americas, as we learned in the last two Presidential elections. And they don't follow the same web sites. Nor do they hold the same opinions about Climate Change.

This post is a reflection of concerns that began in 2007 when it appeared the Gray Whale migration route was being explored for wind generation by "environmentalists".
                                                                                                               

• No, this election did not reaffirm Climate Change policy - it emphasized how far apart Americans are Monday, November 16, 2020
   
• A depressing climate crisis update to all: When we fixed the ozone problem we made the greenhouse gas problem worse. Can humans solve the problem? Tuesday, January 21, 2020
   
• A depressing climate crisis update to all: Rising ocean temperatures will increase violent deaths! Monday, January 13, 2020
   
• A depressing climate crisis update to all. Victoria Police Facebook post: "You are in danger and need to act immediately to survive. It is too late to leave." Tuesday, January 7, 2020
   
• Climate Change Black Death is inevitable: It is officially too late to prevent the release of a gigaton of methane and 37 gigatons of carbon dioxide from an Arctic permafrost thaw by 2100 Wednesday, December 11, 2019
   
• Thunberg is right. Americans are more focused on "money and fairytales of eternal economic growth" despite the efforts of some to bring about change. Monday, September 30, 2019
   
• The American "greed is good" cabal begin its assault on Greta Thunberg and Mahatma Gandhi Wednesday, September 25, 2019
   
• "Climate Change Black Death Surrounds Us" means impacts of Climate Change are killing people now! Will we even try to reduce 21st Century impacts? Thursday, September 19, 2019
   
• On behalf of the kids - climate scientests quit being conservative as the adults aren't fearful enough Monday, September 16, 2019
   
• Climate Change: When we collectively don't know what we are doing, we should fear for our future! Sunday, September 15, 2019
   
• Why are Presidential Primary candidates pushing Climate Change policy? Is it because the foundation of our American culture is ignorance of history? Wednesday, June 26, 2019
   
• As Climate Change Black Death surrounds us the Democratic Debates were depressingly irrelevant Friday, August 2, 2019
   
• Can California and China lead a war on Climate Change Black Death to save wine production? Tuesday, June 18, 2019
   
• U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo explains the conservative "old deal" to address Climate Change Monday, June 10, 2019
   
• No, we're not Australia, but Democrats need to pay heed to what just happened in the Aussie election Friday, June 7, 2019
   
• Britain's "civilized debate" via lithium powered "devices" over solutions to the Climate Change crisis is fiddling while Rome (and the World) burns Thursday, May 9, 2019
   
• "The Truth Is Out There" but it needs to be dramatized Tuesday, April 23, 2019
   
• It is not true that as new EPA Administrator asserts "most of the threats from climate change are 50 to 75 years out" for millions of vulnerable Americans Wednesday, April 17, 2019
   
• From America's Midwest to Africa the water is deep while ocean waters are warming faster than thought - while the need to adapt become more obvious Monday, March 25, 2019
   
• The Deplorables to advance Climate Change Black Death by trading The California Green and Gold Deal for "more affordable" new cars for older voters Friday, February 22, 2019
   
• Has Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez cost us decades of progress on the Green New Deal? Wednesday, February 13, 2019
   
• The personally disturbing population collapse of Monarch Butterflies and nearly all other insects Monday, February 11, 2019
   
• No, The Green New Deal is not new. But two generations of Democrats - Ocasio-Cortez and Pelosi - begin the push toward implementation Thursday, February 7, 2019
   
• The coming Climate Change Black Death. If only humanity knew in advance what was coming and that something could be done about it! Oh, wait.... Thursday, February 7, 2019
   
• "They talk about the end of the world and we are talking about the end of the month!" How Climate Change policy has become the 21st Century symbol of economic division in Western democracies Wednesday, December 19, 2018
   
• As the midterm election approaches we should be in great fear of Climate Change. Why aren't we? Saturday, October 27, 2018
   
• The lack of comprehensive political economy goals will create concurrent pecuniary and environmental disasters for U.S. Gen X and all future generations. Friday, October 4, 2018
   
• While The Deplorables roll back environmental regulation tropical cyclones (aka hurricanes and typhoons) wreak havoc on Atlantic and Pacific coastlines Saturday, September 15, 2018
   
• What was wrong with managed timber harvesting??? When your air is clogged with congestive climate change, who should be blamed? Monday, August 20, 2018
   
• Three redwoods, clear waters, and mountains of silver and gold: "Ignorance is bliss" was a warning to provide for the next generation, economic advice from a poem America has forgotten but China has embraced Saturday, May 5, 2018
   
• The Anthropocene is not real: How arrogance of human-importance has allowed climate scientists to trample chronostratigraphic science creating fake news for political purposes Wednesday, February 21, 2018
   
• Foolish planning and the inevitable wildfires: What could have been learned from John Steinbeck about California's true climate Saturday, December 9, 2017
   
• Gray Whales threatened, again! Wind and wave electrical generation structures planned for Pacific Gray Whale migration route Friday, June 30, 2017
   
• In California we are overcoming words that blind and bind since we want our descendants to survive (5 posts) Tuesday, January 17, 2017
   
• Climate Change: The shiny old object catching the eye of some lesser wrong-headed politicians Sunday, December 4, 2016
   
• The Cloud versus the Gray Whale Saturday, February 25, 2012
   
• Obama's Administration & the wave energy technocrats: What whales? Sunday, January 22, 2012
   
• FERC Ponders Allowing Public Input, Environmental Review of Proposal for Electrical Generators in Whale Route Wednesday, July 23, 2008
   
• Limited Time Only - Act now to own your piece of the Pacific Ocean off the Mendocino Coast Wednesday, August 1, 2007