The fact that mankind is failing miserably to address the most urgent crisis in human history is no accident. There are plenty of people who are working hard to ensure nothing gets done, and the greedy, myopic polluters win.
Thanks to a link posted on Facebook by 350.org, this new post by Rolling Stone is getting the attention it deserves well before its February 3 newsstand release.
Consider this akin to a police line-up of the suspects in the murder of up to 3 billion people.
Below is a peek into the verdict.
Sure, we may get a small item here and there mentioning the "Topsy-Turvy Weather", like in today's NY Times. But seldom is there serious attention paid to CLIMATE issues, which if left unchecked (like they have been for decades), have the capacity to render our only biosphere largely uninhabitable.
But it's no big deal according to the Dirty Dozen.
Lowlights:
- Bjørn Lomborg, Author, "Cool It"
This guy actually makes money acting as if he really cares about climate change. The irony is palpable.
Instead of pushing to cap carbon pollution immediately, he continues to cite research that is a decade out of date, asserting that "global sea levels are not likely to rise more than about 20 inches by 2100." In fact, the latest research shows that sea levels will likely rise by three to six feet.
...
"He's a performance artist disguised as an academic," says Howard Friel, an independent researcher who has systematically debunked Lomborg's work.
- Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Democrat, West Virginia
Who said Democrats were not also to blame? Not me. King Coal has 2 solidly pro-pollution Senators from WV.
Last year, he led the charge in the Senate to prevent the EPA from regulating carbon emissions, insisting that Congress should be the one to "determine how best to reduce greenhouse gases in a way that protects West Virginia's economy."
- Tom Donahue, President, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
It is a shame that somewhere along the way people decided the environment is the enemy of commerce. It need not be the case, and until we get that thru our collective thick skulls, mankind's chances are bleak.
Donahue likes to call his organization "the voice of business." But under his leadership, the Chamber has become the voice of big polluters like ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute. "The main purpose of the Chamber," says climate expert Joe Romm, "is to launder money from large industries and multinational corporations to affect public policy."
- Charles and David Koch, CEO and Executive VP, Koch Industries
These filthy-rich brothers have amassed a mountain of wealth as a result of their efforts. You gotta wonder if they have also bought a planet on which their descendants may live.
With a combined worth of $43 billion, these two aging, archconservative brothers are America's leading funders of the climate-disinformation machine. By perpetuating the use of fossil fuels, they in turn fuel their sprawling empire of oil refineries and pipelines — the second-largest private corporation in the country.
This is what happens when the greedy oil barons of the world win:
And of course, the Aussie Pirate himself (oh, to have Keith around to do this part)-
- Rupert Murdoch, CEO, News Corporation
No one does more to spread dangerous disinformation about global warming than Murdoch. In a year of record heat waves in Africa, freak snowstorms in America and epic flooding in Pakistan, the Fox network continued to dismiss climate change as nothing but a conspiracy by liberal scientists and Big Government.
Owning the media makes you powerful.
Who knew?
There is just one woman on the list. She is best known for her work Palin around with Terrorists who want to keep the US addicted to oil. It seems like she and these 11 white men have done quite well for themselves at the expense of the rest of us as well as all the other species on Earth.
Until we begin to overcome the winning ways of people like those mentioned in the R.S. piece, get ready for lots more "weird weather." It is more fun to speak of it that way that call it what it is: The harbinger of the end of life as we know it.
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UPDATE by LaughingPlanet on Mon Jan 24, 2011 at 12:44 PM PST:
Feel free to view/rec this at the other DK as well. Maybe some of us already dwell there and the news can spread in the 4th dimension.