Tuesday, October 28, 2014

The disastrous legacy of climate change deniers

Yesterday The Nation published a list of the ten top donors to climate change deniers in Congress. It’s the usual suspects we’ve come to expect, the Koch’s, Exxon Mobile, General Electric, and assorted other villains.

The thing about this that I find most troubling is the absolute disregard the people who authorize these donations have for their own families. They clearly don’t care that they are condemning their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren to lives on a dangerously toxic and unpredictable planet. Everything that we are just beginning to experience now — rising sea levels, severe temperatures, droughts, ever more powerful storms, species of animals dying off — will only increase as the years go by. The only conclusion a person can come to is that money is more important to them than their families.

Let’s say you own a home and you have it inspected. The inspector tells you that termites have been eating at the foundation of the house, and that if you don’t have them exterminated soon, the house will eventually collapse. If you’re Charles Koch, not only do you refuse to have the pests exterminated because it’s too expensive, you then give the damaged house to your children in your will. What kind of human being would do that?

It’s difficult to fathom such greed and callousness. These people didn’t get where they are by being gullible idiots, so it’s impossible for me to believe that they don’t know climate change is real. They are cynical capitalists who worship money over everything else. They have no allegiance to a country, a religion, an ideology or even their own family. Money is their god, and it’s destroying the planet.


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