The Fast, Brutal Ride Down

Brought to you by Human Behavior 101

Shafted. Photo by Aleskei, Shutterstock

I never wanted to write about politics. I wanted to write about climate change. I wanted to know if EVs could help save the planet. That question sounds stunningly naive now. I was sent on this journey by conversations on Twitter and exposure to climate scientists. I began reading their papers and realized the enormous gap between the reality of their studies, and the pablum we’re offered in the uber wealthy owned mainstream news. So I chose to learn and write.

From an article in The New Republic, quoting greed tycoon Jeff Bezos, recently on his Washington Post editorial policy:

“We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others... I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.”

Huh? Ever noticed free markets are destroying the planet, bunker buddy?

When I started this work, in addition to difficult scientific publications, I subscribed to the biggest newspapers from coast to coast, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. All three have occasionally published outstanding articles on climate change. I discovered The Guardian, which so far comes closest in consistent content addressing the breakdown of an Earth that can continue to support human, genetically similar life, and that which we often find alien and unworthy such as reptiles and insects, yet they and we all originated from the same primordial pool billions of years ago. Everything is related and interdependent on Planet Earth.

The three former publications have fallen short in calling out the horrifying genocide being carried out in Gaza, which I suspect is in part driven by massive LNG deposits in the Mediterranean Sea. It is estimated enough gas is available to meet Israel’s needs for 40 years in the Leviathan Basin, some 22 trillion recoverable cubic feet as well as 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Do you think the Zionists want to share with people they have housed in an open air prison since 2007?

Eastern Mediterranean LNG discoveries in 2022

The Leviathan Basin

BTW, remember that “pause” on LNG Biden enacted? I doubted that would hold then, and certainly don’t expect it to hold now as Trump works to end ANY controls on raping the natural world and speeding our demise faster. A byproduct of Permian Basin fracking, the LNG to be stored in a massive expansion of facilities being built in the “Gulf of America,” headlined by Calcasieu Pass 2 (CP2) threaten the world with the equivalent of the emissions of an additional 675 coal-fired power plants.

We are in two existential crises, rapidly implemented fascism before our eyes daily, and the mindless trashing of the Earth. We must not lose sight of the second one.

From my article Giving Pause to Disaster:

On Tuesday, the New York Times published an article announcing the $10 billion Calcasieu Pass 2 (CP2) LNG storage facility to be built on the Louisiana Gulf coast is paused, while the Department of Energy reviews its implications. CP2 is just one of seventeen such terminals proposed or currently under construction by the fossil fuel industry and would dwarf current infrastructure, most of which is located on the already heavily deteriorated Gulf of Mexico shoreline. CP2 alone would ship about 20 million metric tons of LNG to markets around the world, producing twenty times the greenhouse gases of the Alaska Willow project yearly, whose motivations, and ecological, global, and social impacts I derided here. Willow will create a mere 260 million tons of greenhouse gases over its lifespan, as compared to billions if these projects move forward.

I wrote about Willow, too, whose oil would help facilitate competition with Russia and China for Arctic resources as it melts even though it’s turning into a runaway feedback system of death. That competition has been in the plan for decades. The US Navy recognized climate change as the biggest threat to national security in 1990. This declassified document proves it.

This map from the Navy’s 2021, A Strategic Blueprint for the Arctic, clearly shows strategic concerns from a geographic standpoint.

Making money. The Tamar natural gas platform in the Mediterranean Sea, just twelve miles offshore from the Gaza Strip, operated by our buddies at Chevron. Photo from 2015, Marc Israel Sellem for the Associated Press

On my journey I discovered overshoot, that of nine planetary systems critical to an inhabitable world, six are in a state of breach. I learned the oceans have absorbed the vast majority of Anthropocene generated heat, a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs every second. I learned the Greenland Ice Sheet started to melt in the late 1950s and that there’s no stopping it. I learned the Arctic, which stores more GHGs than we have managed to burn to since the advent of the industrial age, is tipping to be an emitter, not a sink. I read of our soil and forests sequestering almost no CO2 in 2023 from the effects of drought and life destroying wildfires. I have watched all this as every month sets a new all-time temperature record, and there is so much more.

Mediterranean Infrastructure Holding’s slogan is, “Our mission is to bring reliable and sustainable energy to life and make people feel safe!” Does this make you feel safe?

These facts have taken thousands of hours of reading, learning, and connecting. Please spread what you learn here far and wide. It’s crucial more people understand the somehow hidden yet in plain sight destruction of our home.

And now there’s Trump, Musk, and his cronies, all climate change deniers and fascists of various stripes, arresting people for speaking truth to lies. Already, ICE has been transformed into gestapo. Already hundreds of Americans are being kidnapped off the streets and held without charges, stripped, given cold showers and left in concrete detention cells with no time limit and no due process.

The buyer’s remorse of the knuckle draggers is just beginning. They have no clue. The rest will simply shank you in this atmosphere. The January 6 goons walk the streets (except for the ones so stupid and broken as to get arrested again). Be careful.

I am not being careful. If my voice disappears, be suspicious. This is why I keep asking for paid subscribers. If you appreciate my courage, I need the boost. Of about 1650 subscribers in three and one half years of hard work, I have just 34 that pay for a subscription. $5 a month. It’s not right. That said, I will keep writing and rejecting a paywall. This work is too important — caveat —my head is not big, it’s only as important as you make it. I need you.

We are being “led” by inhuman beasts who give not one whit about human life or have any belief in science. It’s a suicidal, genocidal shit show. If we don’t find the courage to fight NOW, the immediate future is the horror of living under fascism, fear to speak openly, and fear of your neighbors, followed by a collapsing planet, collapsing faster than what most climate scientists anticipated. This collapse will take down the world economy, and everything we blithely took for granted in this brief and biggest bubble of all time, the age of The Illusions of Fossil Fuels. There will be more wars, more plagues, and billions of deaths. It’s fight time or an even faster, more brutal ride down. I choose to fight. I hope you’re with me. They can’t disappear all of us. Boycott for the rest of your life. Organize locally. Support unions. Sick out and strike.

The only policy that will save us is reducing our pollution and consumption. We’re going to degrow one way or another as agriculture and water become increasing failures. Planned degrowth is far preferable to the path we’re on. Otherwise, get serious about your prepping.