Mary Annaïse Heglar is Senior Policy Publications Editor for the National Resources Defense Council writes at Medium and Vox—The big lie we’re told about climate change is that it’s our own fault:
Whether we admit it or not, we’re all in the middle of one big, giant mourning process. We’re mourning our futures. We’re mourning the children we’re afraid to have. Our bucket lists. Our travel plans. Some of us are mourning homes already lost to fires or flood, or savings accounts wiped out helping relatives recover from hurricanes. Some of us are mourning our todays, even our yesterdays.
Denial is part of the traditional mourning process, but we have collectively spent way too long there. It’s time to snap out of it.
Given the sheer enormity of climate change, it’s okay to be depressed, to grieve. But please, don’t stay there too long. Join me in pure, unadulterated, righteous anger.
The dominant narrative around climate change tells us that it’s our fault. We left the lights on too long, didn’t close the refrigerator door, and didn’t recycle our paper. I’m here to tell you that is bullshit. If the light switch was connected to clean energy, who the hell cares if you left it on? The problem is not consumption — it’s the supply. And your scrap paper did not hasten the end of the world.
Don’t give in to that shame. It’s not yours. The oil and gas industry is gaslighting you.
That same IPCC report revealed that a mere 100 companies are responsible for 71 percent of global climate emissions. These people are locking you and everything you love into a tomb. You have every right to be pissed all the way off. And we have to make them hear about it. [...]
It’s not our fault, but it is very much our problem. It’s dire, but we have to dig in our heels and fight — for each other.
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On this date at Daily Kos in 2011—Senate Republicans unveil 'new jobs plan' identical to all previous GOP 'jobs plans':
With as much fanfare as could be mustered, which as it turns out is not all that much, Senate Republicans (in this instance, John McCain, Rand Paul and Rob Portman) have released their newest "jobs plan," this one called the "Real American Jobs Act," which is not to be confused with the American Jobs Act, because this one has the word "Real." The carefully crafted document is identical to every other Republican "jobs plan" proposed in the last few years:
[The plan] amounts to a conservative’s dream agenda: targeting labor and environmental regulations, enacting a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, lowering corporate and individual tax rates, encouraging energy production and expanding free trade, according to a draft obtained by POLITICO.
So, their "jobs plan" is to cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy, gut regulations, drill for more oil and do a Balanced Budget Amendment, which is literally the exact same crap in every other Republican "plan" in existence.
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