I've posted over 700 diaries on the environment and climate change over the eight years I've been at Daily Kos. The environment has been one of my greatest passions since childhood, and when I became aware of the threat of climate change, I became an environmental and political activist, I even created a very low carbon lifestyle.
So while it may seem that I've abandoned my environmental interest by not writing as many diaries on the climate crisis, I'm writing here to let you know that that is far from the truth.
I think by now, that people who are paying attention understand that climate change is an existential threat. We are living through humanities greatest crisis. The bad climate news daily is overwhelming.
I don't think we need to know the exact details of the catastrophe, we need to know what to do about it.
There are many solutions and we are working on most of them, such as transition to clean energy and away from fossil fuels, new technologies to make our severely stressed natural resources go farther, etc.
But, we have let the issue of rising greenhouse gas emissions go on too long, and we find ourselves with an emergency situation where the only action to avoid the worst effects of climate change and save a livable planet for our species (and others) is complete systemic change.
The fossil fuel industry is the most powerful industry our world has ever known and they are not going quietly. The fossil fuel industries tentacles have wrapped around enabling governments globally. They have permeated every area of the world and our existence for the past century. Removing them is like trying to pull a vampire squid away from it's only source of food.
So if we're to have any success at all in removing the vampire squid we must cut off its ties to all its enablers.
Here's where our mission becomes clear but extremely difficult because the fossil fuel industries enablers are also some of the most powerful entities on our planet. By powerful I mean by the capitalist definition of power. In a unfettered capitalist society such as ours money=power.
So we must somehow break up the enablers to kill the vampire squid. The enablers to the fossil fuel industry include: the global financial system who is the biggest blood sucking vampire our planet has ever known, corrupt governments who are propped up by the money fueled by the money interests (including our own), and the multi-national corporations who not only have the unregulated power that corporations now observe but also our SCOTUS has deemed to give them the privileges of individuals also.
So we have a tall order if we are to have a livable planet. We have been chipping away at the edges of reducing greenhouse gas emissions for many years but still we find ourselves in an emergency, crisis situation. Our little contributions to reducing GHG emissions is a kick in the bucket. In order to really attack the problem we must change the system that is responsible for creating it.
I've really been in despair knowing that our small incremental actions would not be enough to save us from tipping points that would lead to uncontrollable worldwide extreme weather and a brutal future for our children and any future generations.
And then along comes one person with the gall to suggest a complete systemic change. Who knows how to get it started and miracle of miracles people are listening.
People are listening to Bernie Sanders so called radical ideas because that's what we need now; real change and better ideas.
We must break up the too big to fail banks. We must give our political system an enema to clean out the corrupt money interests. If you don't think that political contributions influence a candidate, I have some Florida swamp land I would like to sell you. We must stop the trade deals that are decimating our middle class and eviscerating the environment worldwide.
Bernie Sanders understands how economic systemic change has influences for both individual justice and climate justice.
It's unbelievable that we have this opportunity to make a huge real change that can heal our society and heal our planet.
If Bernie Sanders is elected POTUS he will be riding a movement wave, with tremendous coattails.
I am imagining the international response to the US election of a 'socialist' as POTUS. It's like giving the neo-cons and neo-libs a big swift kick out of our bed. With the influence of the US we could have a safer planet for generations to come.
So that is why I've been writing political diaries lately. I believe our last chance to save us from the worst effects of climate change is political. We've had the solutions to mitigate climate change for a long time but our corrupt economic and political systems have prevented their use. So now, we must change our system and we have the means to do so.