The WaPo has an excellent briefing on Bidenâs new border policy. If you’ve wondered why thereâs no longer mass chaos at the southern border since Title 42 was lifted, it’s because the Biden administration has completely transformed how migrants, asylum-seekers, and those who enter illegally are treated.
You have to apply to enter the US legally by making an appointment using an app. It can take up to six weeks to get the appointment, but once you do, you are interviewed, photographed, and released to a social service agency that helps migrants, or a relative or sponsor who has registered with the feds. (Plus the app uses GPS to track your movements.) You then wait for your application for asylum to be processed and your claim adjudicated.
If you enter illegally, you are sent to a massive tent city to be fed and given necessities. You get your health checked out. And then you are sent back over the border with instructions on how to apply legally via the app.
The two processes illustrate the extent to which the Biden administration has transformed the way asylum seekers and migrants are processed along the southern border. As a result, illegal crossings have dropped by close to 70% since early May. Yes, 43,000 asylum-seekers get into the US every month. But until Congressional Republicans agree to a sensible immigration policy, controlling the influx in this manner seems to be the best alternative. On to cartoons.
What the GOP cares about:
We wonât fight climate change, so you’ll have to:
The GOP’s latest tangent:
The GOP decides the FBI is liberal:
Itâs ironic that the GOP wants to defund the FBI which has always been a Republican bastion. And if the Elephant wants help with his minor surgery, Wrongoâs happy to assist. Itâs doubtful that the FBI is about to start prosecuting illegal corporate activities with the same eagerness they showed when chasing after BLM and Occupy Wall Street.
Harbor Seals hauling out on a buoy in Petersburg, AK. Wrongo and Ms. Right were passing by in a zodiac â July 2023 photo via the cruise line
It seems like itâs going to stay hot for a long while, and nobody wants to do anything about it. Temperatures are rising both on land and at sea, with climate experts ringing alarm bells about unprecedented sea surface temperatures:
âThe National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in late June warned that half of the world’s oceans may experience marine heat wave conditions by September.â
âNot only is Florida sizzling in record-crushing heat, but the ocean waters that surround it are scorching, as well. The unprecedented ocean warmth around the state â connected to historically warm oceans worldwide â is further intensifying its heat wave and stressing coral reefs, with conditions that could end up strengthening hurricanes.â
The NYT reported that the water temperature around Florida hit 90° yesterday.
And while itâs possible to score cheap political points on their governor DeSantis who would rather fight with Mickey Mouse and whatever âWokeâ means this week while ignoring climate change, Wrongo wonât stoop to that. Heâs sure that Floridians love their governorâs priorities. Just last week, as insurance companies were pulling out of Florida, DeSantis was saying not to worry, the insurers will return to Florida after the hurricane season.
As Pogo said many years ago: âWe have met the enemy and he is us.â
Primarily, the enemy is the Republican politician who continues to vote against efforts to bring the worldâs CO2 levels under some semblance of control. The fixes to climate change that will have the most impact involve changes in public policy that will never happen as long as Republicans hold enough votes to block them.
But the big idea is that weâre not going back to where we were heat-wise, no matter what we do to cut further CO2 emissions. As NYT journalist Jeff Goodell said on NPR: (brackets by Wrongo)
âWe are moving into a different world, and we need to grasp that idea….the planet is heating up…because we’re putting CO2 into the atmosphere…..It is essentially permanent when we put it [CO2] up there….And the warming will not stop until we stop emitting CO2 and burning fossil fuels….And even if we stop [adding more] CO2, we are stuck with that warming planet for a very long time.â
So, even if at this moment we made huge changes, we would always be on this part of the temperature scale, unless we figure out how to take quite a bit of that CO2 out of the atmosphere.
A few red state legislatures are considering following South Carolina’s lead and simply banning all mention of global warming or climate change in official documents or state-funded research. They think the only real way to deal with the climate problem is to ignore it.
Worse, nobody has a good model for what happens when all that warm water sits and gets warmer. Some meteorologists have pointed out that if the Caribbean got hot enough, it could spawn a continuous series of Category 5 hurricanes, say, once a week from May to October.
Which would resolve the problem of insuring Floridaâs oceanfront properties pretty quickly.
Itâs becoming evident that we live in a world designed for a climate that no longer exists. Whatâs really sobering is that the climate that now exists wonât resemble the one that will exist a generation from now.
How our societies and political systems deal with this is the central question of the 21st century.
Wrongo and Ms. Right moved back to New England from California partly because of climate. We were concerned about how scarce water would become in Los Angeles, and we knew that Connecticut would have more water for longer. This week, several of our roads and bridges closed because we had too much rain, causing the Housatonic River to overflow its banks.
This shows that there are no longer any places that can be marked safe from climate change. It has become impossible to predict the future climate/weather anywhere based on the past. And weâre still not coming to terms with just how hot and dangerous things are becoming. Or how fast itâs happening.
Letâs close the week with a wake up tune. Hereâs âThe Effects of Climate Change on Densely Populated Areasâ by People Under The Stairs, a hip hop group from LA formed in 1997:
Sample Lyric:
Hundred degrees at midnight for the third day in a row
Nobody sleepin’ well and I can feel the tension growin’
LA wth rollin’ brownouts, rollin’ papers and rollin’ sixties
Heat exhaustion increasing caution across the city
Some people hit the mall, they’re tryin’ to stay cool
Some people call the cops; “there’s black children in the pool”
Everybody’s lookin’ sideways, we’re ragin’ on the highways
I hate it, I’m tryin’ to stay hydrated and faded but my way Is blocked
By road construction like a scene from “Falling Down”
Cops, they tryin’ to function but it seems they takin’ down us
Brown people at will People get hot and then killed
As the sun begins to set it’s hotter, no-one can chill
Everybody’s windows open there’s not a moment of silence
Alcohol heatin’ frustration that’s increasing domestic violence
9-1-1 is overwhelmed, homie, guess you on your own The hills are still on fire, I recommend you stay at home
Hurricane Ian should remind us of one thing: Weâre all in this life together. Itâs easy to let your partisan flag fly with âgotchasâ since weâre talking about Florida.
We could be smug watching Republicans like Governor DeSantis, who happily stoked outrage about âgovernment tyrannyâ over vaccines and masks, getting frustrated when his constituents fail to follow evacuation orders.
We could go for the schadenfreude when watching the up-by-your-bootstraps types in Florida line up for government assistance from FEMA. Or what was the best part? Watching DeSantis, whose entire MO is trolling Biden and the Democrats, happily accepting help from Dark Brandon and the federales.
âBut hereâs the thing: Weâre not talking about debating points. Weâre talking about human beings…. Whoâve had tragedy visited on them. And the only responses should be empathy, charity, and love.â
On to cartoons.
Uncle Sam does his job, regardless of politics:
Some say that stronger hurricanes aren’t an indication that the climate is changing:
A Halloween prayer â photographer unknown. Fear is everywhere in the world. Is there reason for hope?
In comments on Wrongoâs post, âClimate Change Summit, Part IIâ, blog reader Gloria R. asked for some suggestions about how older people could help with climate change, given that the outcome will only be clear after the elderly are long gone.
Good question. In some ways, climate despair is a new kind of climate denial, blunting the momentum for action, just when we need it most. Despair can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But young people arenât feeling hopeless. The first truly global social movements dedicated to climate action and climate justice have gained in size and strength, beginning with Greta Thunbergâs Fridays for the Future and spreading to the Sunrise Movement in America and to climate justice movements around the world.
First suggestion: These movements are long on enthusiasm and short of money. Maybe geezers could fund them?
Second, capital continues to leave fossil fuel investments. According to a recent study. this shifting of financial assets could potentially stop the fossil fuel companies from giving lip service to climate change, particularly if they lose political power. Maybe geezers could direct their financial advisors to move their investment $$ away from these big emitters?
Third, state and local governments set building codes and local energy-use regulations. They also set zoning and land use rules. So, maybe geezers could get political on a local level and work to make what we tend to call the âliving laboratories for democracyâ (state and local governments) havens of better climate policies and practices?
Fourth, some of us donât have funds to back up our ideals. One thing geezers can do that is costless is to send a letter to their kids about what they did to make sure the future isnât an environmental wasteland. Thatâs the premise behind DearTomorrow, a project thatâs archiving letters about climate change written by people to their future children, selves, or family. The idea is to foster personal engagement with the problems and solutions to climate change. DearTomorrow asks letter writers to focus on positive themes and why they have hope for future generations. Writing a letter to their future self or loved ones makes it personal.
Fifth, join Elders Climate Action, a group of grandparents who mobilize elders to address climate change. Theyâre trying to protect the well-being of their grandchildren.
There you go, Gloria (and all geezers), five ideas. There are many, many others.
Finally, the response to the Covid pandemic demonstrated how societies and economies can pivot very quickly in response to a global emergency. The response was far from perfect. The rich countries took care of their own citizens first, and then moved in some cases reluctantly, to help the poor nations. But for the medium-term, we now have a blueprint for the globe working together on a global crisis.
Energy efficiency is moving from the margins toward a new normal in the products we use. Think how commonplace LED light bulbs are today.
The price of solar and wind power has plunged, and thereâs reason to expect that the cost of energy storage, key to an electric power grid reliant on renewable energy, will decline over time.
The supply of clean energy resources is growing faster than new sources of âdirtyâ energy. Now, the potential for electric power generated from clean, steady sources is becoming a reality.
Thatâs Wrongoâs brief take on reasons to be hopeful about our climate future. But thatâs no reason to stop the effort to hold corporations and politicians accountable for making climate change a top priority. On Thursday at a House Oversight Committee hearing, four fossil fuel CEOs refused to declare climate change an âexistential crisisâ, using weasel words to avoid reality. They must be stopped.
Enough for today, itâs time for our Saturday Soother, when we take a brief break from whatever is going on in the Virginia governorâs race and spend a few minutes concentrating on the natural world around us. Here in CT, weâve seen temperatures in the mid-30s. Weâve started leaf blowing. It will go on until at least the first week of December.
Time to bundle up, grab a comfy chair by a window, and listen to Broken Peach perform a live Halloween version of Soft Cellâs âTainted Loveâ in zombie makeup. Broken Peach is a cover band from Spain:
Mt. Princeton, Buena Vista, CO – October 2021 photo by Haji Mahmood
Biden sees the Glasgow Climate Summit as a legacy event that will bring about substantive change. But nobody believes that. Change doesnât occur easily, and in the case of climate change, the forces arrayed against it are overwhelming.
Corporations will not give up profits easily. Individuals will not willingly pay more for goods once companies jack up their prices to maintain margins. Countries will try desperately to avoid being the first to bend the CO2 curve, knowing that their economic growth will slow precipitously.
Sometimes a change in culture has to occur before political change can begin. Think about the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, or the anti-war movement in the early 1970s. Those great political changes were built on a foundation of cultural change. One came from Black churches, and the other from college students.
Weâre in the middle of a 2-year Covid debacle on top of a 13-year economic debacle. Before the Great Recession, if people werenât making it, they (and everyone else) thought the problem wasnât Americaâs politics or our economic system, but it was mostly about their laziness or lack of skills. Back then, we believed that anyone could make it. Few thought the system was rigged, and there wasnât a widespread push for serious change.
Now, young people are tumbling to the fact the problem isnât them â itâs the system. Think of it as a game of musical chairs, where the people sitting down never stand up when the music plays. From Ian Welsh: (Brackets by Wrongo)
âThey [the young] think, âitâs you, not meâ where âyouâ = society and politics. They may have…student loans, but they know boomers paid….[only] a nominal amount for university. They know they canât afford a home or apartment, not because they donât earn enough, but because wages have effectively gone down, and real home prices have gone up….They know medical care is too expensive and that drugs didnât used to cost nearly this much.â
Young people are beginning to understand that without political change, their lives arenât going to get better. In fact, they will probably get worse. This is true for the climate as well as for the basic inequalities in our society.
We need a political revolution to change these things, but Americaâs political system doesnât like big changes. It does enable smaller cultural and political changes all the time. Our politicians give us intermittent reinforcement: They are amenable and sometimes eager to serve up limited forms of change, but not what most people want, or what the planet needs.
And the longer we rely on todayâs politicians to save us, the farther we will be from the changes we need. Our political system is very resistant to change, as the prolonged debate over Bidenâs social spending bill shows.
And thereâs no political will at any level to change the system.
Still, it has to change, or it will self-destruct. When you are at Wrongoâs advanced age, the temptation is to say, âthe future is hopeless.â But Americaâs youth will soon replace the elders in both political parties. They will not be staying quiet.
What must happen is a cultural change that a significant portion of the population will buy into. It doesnât have to be everyone, but it has to be compelling to at least a 10%-20% minority which can then influence the other 80%-90%.
We live in a culture that values greed, power, and control over other peopleâs lives. So, the new culture must be built on a different set of values. Insisting on a different set of values is something we can all do both individually and collectively.
The Trumpists have attempted this with middle-aged White Americans. Steve Bannon knew that change must first happen culturally, that the culture has to want it, or at least allow it. But so far, the Trumpist appeal seems limited to 30% of the population.
The other 70% are on the sidelines, waiting for a reason to believe in something else.
If you doubt that young people can have an outsized impact, watch âThe Children Will Rise Up!â an climate change anthem written by Nandi Bushell, who gained social media fame as a drummer, and Roman Morello, son of Rage Against the Machineâs Tom Morello. Here these two 10 year-olds perform with cameos by Jack Black and Greta Thunberg:
Sample Lyric:
They let the earth bleed to feed their greed.
Stop polluting politicians poisoning for profit.
While they are killing all the trees, now we all can’t breathe
As the temperature’s a rising, nothing is surviving.
Representatives from 200 countries will meet in Glasgow, Scotland later this week to try once again to iron out an approach to heading off the disaster that will occur as global warming continues.
While this is a political gathering, the real focus should and must be on businesses. They are the primary sources of carbon emissions. And they are very concerned about their future should governments agree to serious efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°-2.0°C.
A real commitment would send shock waves through the business models of all corporations.
Corporations donât like being forced by governments to do much of anything. With climate change, they prefer to make voluntary gestures, just enough to keep governments off their backs. One problem is that many have become more sophisticated in their soft climate denialism, as opposed to the 87-year old Oklahoma Senator who brought a snowball to the floor of the Senate.
If weâre serious about global warming, governments need to force corporations to pay for the damage they do to the planet. That should take at least two forms.
First, a global carbon tax. For big emitters, this would be an immediate threat to profitability. They will fight carbon taxes with all the weapons at their disposal. Reporters have exposed well-funded misinformation campaigns sponsored by them. More about carbon taxes below.
Second, corporations canât be allowed to walk away from the pollution they create. Bloomberg reports that old oil and gas sites are a climate menace:
âThere are hundreds of thousands of…decrepit oil and gas wells across the US, and for a long time few people paid them much mind. That changed over the past decade as scientists discovered the surprisingly large role they play in the climate crisis. Old wells tend to leak, and raw natural gas consists mostly of methane, which has far more planet-warming power than carbon dioxide.â
Bloomberg focuses on one company, Diversified Energy Co., owner of 69,000 wells throughout the US, making them Americaâs largest well owner. Diversified has alarmed some regulators and environmental advocates:
âState laws require that every well be plugged with cement after it runs dry, an expensive and complicated chore. At the rate Diversified is paying dividends to shareholders, some worry there will be nothing left when those bills come due. If a company canât meet its plugging obligations, that burden falls to the state…â
Diversifiedâs business model is partially built on abandoning its played-out wells. If Diversified is allowed to walk, states are likely to be stuck with a $ billions mess. The only way to deal with this and similar problems is to change our bankruptcy laws so that liability for environmental damage isnât expunged in bankruptcy. That change will require substantial political courage.
Back to a potential carbon tax: The Economist reports: (brackets and parenthesis by Wrongo)
âEven business[es]…realize that the best way to apply pressure is by imposing a global system of carbon taxes, with some form of redistribution to ease the pain on the poorest….The trouble is that only about one-fifth of global emissions is covered by a price on carbon. As a result, the global average price is just $3 per ton of carbon dioxide.
[But] To meet the ambitions of the Paris agreement, the IMF says the global carbon price needs to rise to $75/ton….For some heavy emitters covered by the European Unionâs emissions-trading system, it is already above âŹ60 ($69). In Chinaâs new (limited) scheme, by contrast, it is a pittance. America has no federal (carbon tax) scheme of any kind.â
The first thing governments must do is to go after the big emitters like utilities, oil and gas firms, steel, and cement makers. A high carbon tax will cause price increases and thus force changes in consumer behavior. Tourist locations would see fewer tourists because flights would be more costly. Supermarkets would provide more local foods. Amazon might need to rethink their distribution strategy. Life as we know it for consumers would change, while for big emitters, this would be an âadapt or perishâ moment. All the more reason why it wonât happen.
The largest problem will be trying to energize collective governmental action.
Self-interest leads every country to do as little as possible to solve this giant global problem. The only way to move these governments is for their citizens to care enough about the world 50 to 75 years from now. They must be willing to make significant sacrifices today for the sake of the future.
âHope comes from people, from democracy, from you…Itâs up to you and me…No one else will do it for us.â
Thunberg is saying that saving the planet will take better politicians. Sheâs correct. The necessary changes require a global political movement. That means thereâs zero reason to be optimistic about the trajectory of global warming.
And like in our domestic politics, itâs another reason why we shouldnât have 80-year olds in charge of our future.
Demo Memo reports that the average worker works 4.77 days a week. But 19% of workers usually work on Saturday, while just 12% work on Sunday, according to the BLS American Time Use Survey. The vast majority, 68% of workers, work Monday through Friday.
Workers without a high school diploma are most likely to work weekends: 31% usually work Saturdays and 17% on Sundays. Those in service occupations are much more likely to work weekends: 39% usually work Saturdays and 28% Sundays.
And hereâs Wrongo doing a little service work on the weekend! This week, the cartoonists were understandably focused on impeachment.
Dems really, really want to believe theyâve got him this time:
The GOP will say theyâve found absolute proof even if thereâs nothing:
Fall, when the Congresspersonâs thoughts turn to impeachment:
Some see only what they are told to see:
Donât be surprised if it comes down to this:
Maybe we could advance the climate discussion if the message was clearer:
Frenchman Bay, viewed from Cadillac Mountain, Acadia NP, ME – 2019 photo by pmek99. Note the cruise ships lining up to visitBar Harbor.
Following up on our post about climate change, many responded by attacking the premise that climate change is happening or, that it is due to human causes.
There have always been deniers. For example, a survey conducted by the YouGov-Cambridge Global Project in partnership with the Guardian, found that 13% of Americans believe that humans are not at all responsible for climate change. Another 5% of Americans donât even believe the climate is changing. So, 18% think we shouldnât worry about climate change.
Wrongo isnât sure that we are focused correctly when we talk about climate change. Itâs not the planet thatâs in trouble, its humans. Humans thrive within a specific range of availability of water, air, and food, as do all animals. If one of the critical inputs is compromised, humans will fail to thrive, our habitable locations will shrink, and the human population will also shrink. The planet will survive.
For much of human history, humans have lived in hotter, dryer locations. They also survived in colder places, and in both, were able to live hard, but reasonably happy lives. Do we want to regress to that?
Peak human experience requires surpluses of food and livable space if the population is to grow. How can that happen on an overpopulated, resource-constrained planet?
Focus on this: Global population is projected to reach approximately 10.9 billion by 2100. If that is true, we will require 10X todayâs electricity output by 2100. When you think about it, even if today, we had already reached the (unrealistic) level of 50% of power sourced from renewables, that would equal only 5% of the power we will need 100 years from now.
So, where will all that energy come from? Can Silicon Valley invent a different form of electric power generation? Will the world go fully into nuclear power?
The same is true for water. Where will the increased water resources come from? Desalination?
Suppose there is no climate change. We are still facing peak oil and peak other resources. We live on a finite Earth. Think about energy: Weâre in a world of expanding energy demand. This will mean substantial shortages in the medium-term, which means immense and unavoidable energy price increases.
Politically, the higher prices should be used to defray the energy costs of the majority of the population that isnât rich enough to pay them. Doing that will take a different economic system than we have today.
Can deniers also wish these problems away?
We live in a world where the big polluters, corporations, are dedicated to maximizing short term returns for a relatively few wealthy beneficiaries.
We still live in a Neoliberal world where government works for the few, where government largess continually transfers income to the wealthy, while our infrastructure is allowed to decay.
We still live in a world where economic growth cannot be sustained forever without collapse.
It will take a global mobilization that is massive, disruptive and smart to deal with the resources constraint, even if there wasnât any climate change. What we really lack is the SOCIAL technology to mobilize corporations and politicians to bring about change.
Concern about the twin problems of finite resources and climate change hasnât brought about any particular political, social or spiritual commitment on the part of the power elites in finance, corporations or politics.
For all of our superiority at the apex of the animal kingdom, we seem unwilling to solve what surely lies ahead. Thatâs why we see Greta Thunberg, a 16 year old scolding world leaders, with 4 million kids standing behind her. To adapt, we will require a Manhattan Project-level of effort, but weâll have to do all that work in the face of depleted resources, an unstable climate, and a contracting economy.
We have choices. We can continue as we are, or we can stop now, take a moment to reassess, and then put ourselves on an alternative path, as the younger generation says we must.
Thunberg challenges us to stop being selfish, to care about the future, to care about living things and recognize that we are all part of the natural world, and that our commitment to continuing economic growth is killing the planet.
