What do the Arctic sea ice shrinking to the lowest extent ever recorded, the UK's top Energy & Climate Change guy calling for a new runway at Heathrow, and the belated start of the Republican National Trainwreck Convention in Tampa have to do with one another? They all happened on August 28, 2012 and, like global warming itself, amount to an existential threat upon humanity the seriousness of which will likely only crystallize beyond the time in which an "Aha!" moment may be useful to us.
While Ann Romney, from the lectern of the most homeless city in the country, jerked a contrived tear out of Mitt Romney fanboys' newly humanized robot eyes even as Tampa's homeless were inhumanely barred from the RNC; while professional opportunist Dem-to-GOP "rising star" Artur Davis professed his politically convenient new-found disdain for Obama to adoring Republicans while some of those Republicans threw peanuts at a black CNN camerawoman, shouting "this is how we feed the animals"; and as Chris Cristie fist-pumped his way into a speech about love and respect while his party's voter ID law authors show racists love and his party's platform codifies respect for rapists over women, the Arctic sea ice was reported to hit its lowest recorded point ever.
If there is a god with any sense of irony, the timing of this could not be more Bachmann-like in its falsely causal glory:
The Republican party's leading lights either deny climate change altogether, or argue that people can adapt to whatever a changed climate may bring, so there's nothing to worry about.
The deluge of reality has had no impact on the party's determination to wish the physical world away. As Salon.com points out, most of the major figures lined up to speak at the convention deny that man-made climate change is happening.
-George Monbiot, "The day the earth went mad", The Guardian
You do have to wonder if a world in which global economic collapses are precipitated by the tony aspirations and abuses of the rich, who then demand that the poorer among us shoulder the burdens to make room for even greater richness among the fewest, has gone too mad to be worth saving.