Is Icarus the Solution to Climate Change?
Although the sun is an essential life force, we need to protect ourselves from its relentless glare.
Sunglasses? Check. Beach umbrella? Check. Tinted car windows? Check. A huge, multitrillion-dollar parasol floating in outer space to reduce global warming? Uh . . . huh?
Ready or not, here come the corporate hucksters and techno-fantasists with a dazzling scheme to prevent climate change without requiring any actual change in human behavior. Amazing! It’s easy: Simply put a massive “spacebrella” between us and el sol, and—voilà!—it will block enough of those bad ol’ sunrays to lower the planet’s temperature enough for us to keep trucking.
This is indeed simple—as in “simpleton.” It reminds me of the 1950s atomic bomb drills we had in elementary school, when we tykes were instructed to protect ourselves by crouching under our desks.
Today’s “spacebrella” hawkers offer the same sort of approach: Since political and corporate powers aren’t doing near enough to prevent cataclysmic climate disaster, they cheerfully say we can hide under their phantasmagoric space shield. That way, we won’t have to bother Big Oil, Big Coal, and other monied powers with our demands to convert from an exploitative fossil fuel economy to climate-friendly fuels and sustainable systems.
It’s embarrassing that this clique of profiteers, politicians, and so-called scientists should be so frivolous as to propose that humanity dodge reality and fritter away our future on such a gimmick. The real solution is right here on Earth, and it requires that we STOP THE STUPIDITY!
These techno-money schemes are like Icarus, the mythological Greek character whose father, Daedalus, created wings of wax and feathers so Icarus could fly—but he flew too close to the sun and the wax melted, plunging him to his death in the sea.
How Corporate Lobbyists Can Engineer a Train Wreck
“Corporate crises consultants” (yes, there are such creatures) have patented a formula allowing their wrongdoing clients to champion reform while simultaneously killing it.
A classic case is now unfolding around the issue of last year’s derailment of an almost two-mile-long Norfolk Southern freight train in East Palestine, Ohio. The community’s air, soil, water, and people suffered a massive spill and burn-off of toxic chemicals.
So, following the corporate crisis script, step one was for the CEO to offer “thoughts and prayers” sentiments for the victims. Step two: reject corporate blame, but promise a thorough investigation. Step three: magnanimously pledge to work with lawmakers to prevent future disasters. And step four: quietly unleash your pack of lobbyists to gut any effective change in the law.
Norfolk honchos are now pushing hard on number four. CEO Alan Shaw recently reiterated the corporation’s promise of reform, but—shhh—he and other rail bosses quietly orchestrated a $17 million increase in the rail industry’s Congressional lobbying to kill or drastically weaken safety proposals that Norfolk had publicly embraced after the wreck. But he keeps talking about reform, slyly assuring locals that Norfolk will be “continuing our engagement” with lawmakers.
“Engagement” is a euphemism for payments. Rail executives have poured beaucoup bucks into compliant Congress critters like Representative Troy Nehls, the Texas Republican chair of a rail safety subcommittee who wailed that Congress must not impose “more burdensome regulations and all this other stuff” on the poor multibillion-dollar giants. Also, U.S. Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, and an industry-financed asset who was formerly a lobbyist for railroads, has tried to derail even modest safety proposals following last year’s derailment, callously calling them a “stalking horse for onerous regulatory mandates and union giveaways.”
May I just say the obvious? These people are disgusting excuses for human beings.