Curt Wechsler | April 18, 2018

Climate scientist Ben Santer fights 'alternative facts'. He's not alone. The consequences of global warming denial affect every person on the planet. Santer advises human actions must be part of the solution:

"You jump through hoops. You do due diligence. You go down every blind alley, every rabbit hole. Over time, the evidence for a discernible human influence on global climate becomes overwhelming.

The Trump cabal of religious extremists, privatization advocates and racists, as described by Jeremy Scahill, suppresses the science that doesn't fit its agenda, "and that should terrify you," reports Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hiltzik. "Nearly every day brings a new report of a federal agency told to shut down communications with the public or even members of Congress; tweets about important topics such as climate change removed from the public record; bans on talking to the press."

January 24's gag order on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and its 2,000 scientists "suppresses the science that doesn't fit [your government's] religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price." The original World Can't Wait Call to Drive Out the Bush Regime proves to be a prescient warning for the environmental destruction and climate change denial we face today. It deserves a fresh read.

"Due to global warming, widespread drought and increasingly polluted water systems, the projected availability of clean freshwater in years to come to meet the rising demands of a growing global population is among the most daunting human challenges of this century," writes Joachim Hagopian at Global Research. "In the same way that without air to breathe, without water we humans cannot sustain life for more than a few days."

Leaders of 150 governments are meeting this week for the UN climate change conference. A huge protest was planned, but was banned.

By now, most people know there are 13 Greenpeace activists hanging from the St. Johns Bridge spanning the Willamette River that connects Portland to the small town of St. Johns. They are protesting Shell Oil's drilling in the Arctic. The icebreaker Fennica arrived in Portland last week for repairs. The ship is now repaired, and there is a cat and mouse game being played out for its departure to the Arctic.

“For a leader who has made fighting climate change a priority, President Barack Obama's decision to approve Royal Dutch Shell's return to oil and gas exploration off Alaska was seen by many environmentalists as a contradiction.”
— Timothy Gardner, Reuters

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on Sunday, November 1, 2014, issued its starkest warning to date. As the NYT described it today:

Failure to reduce emissions, the group of scientists and other experts found, could threaten society with food shortages, refugee crises, the flooding of major cities and entire island nations, mass extinction of plants and animals, and a climate so drastically altered it might become dangerous for people to work or play outside during the hottest times of the year.

The tremendous outpouring in NYC on Sunday (and it should be added, perhaps more importantly, at Wall Street on Monday (#FloodWallStreet)) over the global climate emergency has some commentators on the Left convinced that the grassroots will now be able to solve the ever-spreading climate catastrophe.