Don's Tuesday Column

        THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   (Red Bluff Daily News   9/10/2019

A week’s worth of crazy…stuff

People with limited information, and marginal understanding, often mislead to generate emotional outrage; they presume that those not outraged are amoral, maliciously ignorant or both.

Consider the supposed destruction of the Amazon rainforests, combined with Trump Derangement Syndrome when Brazilian president Bolsonaro was painted as a Trump-like despoiler of said Amazon forests, oblivious to the “lungs of the earth” being choked with smoke. Outrageous, no?

“Here’s The Data Showing The Amazon Fires Aren’t As Bad As You’ve Probably Heard,” by Mark Proeger: NASA said that the fires were the worst since 2010 in the state of Amazonas, Brazil. While accurate, it leaves out these facts: 1) The Amazon spans eight different countries; only 28 percent resides within the state of Amazonas. 2) “In terms of the entire 16 years of fire records we have, this year is only slightly above average.”

3) While burning to prepare for farming does affect some forest, most of the burning is done on previously cleared land by subsistence farmers. 4) Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon, which is about 60 percent of the total rain forest, has steadily declined since peaking in the 1980s and remains below 3,000 square miles per year on average. 5) That sounds like a lot of forest but the Amazon basin contains about 2.2 million square miles of forest spread out over 2.7 million square miles—the equivalent of 16.5 Californias filled with trees, or nearly the entire lower 48 states.

Globally, “according to a study in Nature International Journal of Science (2018), satellite data going back to 1982” shows that the net balance of earth’s forests has increased by 865,000 square miles over 35 years, or the equivalent of five Californias filled with trees. That includes the losses in the Amazon. Puts a damper on the outrage-filled crusade to demonize all things Trump-related.

Read that first paragraph again; now consider the CNN climate change town hall marathon where Democratic candidates regaled us with their plans to “fix” the climate “crisis/catastrophe/existential threat.” “Climate Change Marathon Brings Out Inner Dictators” by Deanna Fisher, Victorygirlsblog.com, provided insight without spending 7 hours glued to CNN.

To summarize the event, it was: “a man-made disaster for Democrat presidential candidates” (W.A. Jacobson), “insane—and the hysteria is getting dangerous” (David Harsanyi), “Dems: Ban Everything” (Tom Elliot), “CNN’s Insane Town Hall Posse” (Scott Johnson).

Climate change is, at this point, “primarily experienced as a mass hysteria phenomenon, a collective illusion of a massive threat” (Joe Pollak). “Beto O’Rourke says our communities will soon be ‘uninhabitable,’ and Pete Buttigieg says the challenge of warming is on par with World War II…Audience members earnestly asked questions based on the risible premise that we’re on the brink of extinction” (dig up 1965’s “Eve of Destruction” by gravelly-voiced Barry McGuire).

Most readers will agree with Mr. Harsanyi: “It’s truly one of the tragedies of our age that so many anxious young people have been brainwashed into believing they live on the cusp of dystopia when, in fact, they’re in the middle of a golden age—an era with less war, sickness, poverty, and suffering than any in history.” Oil extraction by “fracking,” making America effectively energy independent, will be banned; natural gas, about one-fourth of our energy, will be left in the ground; nuclear energy, which makes up a highly reliable 20 percent of America’s needs, must be decommissioned.

However, for only $93 trillion, or 4 times our annual GDP, we’ll have the Green New Deal. Replacing nearly 20 million barrels of petroleum products per day will require that every open space in America be covered in solar panels and wind turbines, and you still won’t be able to use your tv, computer or refrigerator on a cold, dark, windless night. Are you eager to live in early 1800s conditions?

These Democrat wannabe-despots will ban most everything for the “laudable” goal of solving a changing climate (which will nonetheless continue to change in perpetuity): plastic straws, red meat, incandescent light bulbs, gas-powered cars, off-shore drilling, coal plants, coal mining, the above-mentioned natural gas and fracking; reproduction must give way to mass-abortion, especially in third-world countries. They want a “carbon free” world, but carbon is in everything and everyone.

Along with the 60s “Eve of Destruction,” let’s bring back the 70s cult classic “Soylent Green.” “In the world ravaged by the greenhouse effect and overpopulation, an NYPD detective investigates the murder of a big company CEO” (Imdb.com). Charlton Heston, as Det. Thorn, must find out why Soylent Industries’ board member W. Simonson was murdered. Powerful forces undermine him; it has something to do with a product, Soylent Green, the staple of the desperate masses’ Tuesday diet.

Det. Thorn, stymied in his pursuit, suspects that Soylent Green may not be an ocean plankton-based food as advertised. Meanwhile, his detective partner, “Sol” Roth (Edward G. Robinson in failing health just like his character) is targeted by a massive ad campaign promising a life of paradisiacal, pain-free euphoria and healing. Thorn, becoming suspicious of the motives behind the ads appealing to “Sol,” begins to spy on the apparatus and procedures funneling the many who are drawn by the pitch, and the connection to Soylent Industries.

I won’t spoil the “Big Reveal,” but if you get a chance to watch “Soylent Green,” you may become suspicious of highly-processed meal fare with little resemblance to actual food items.

On a related note, “Swedish Prof Urges ‘Eating Human Flesh—to Save the Climate’” by Tyler O’Neil, might illustrate life imitating art. Magnus Soderlund, Stockholm School of Economics, argued for breaking down the ancient taboos against desecrating the human corpse—cannibalism, “the possibility of eating human flesh—to save the climate…He suggested that people’s resistance to eating human flesh ‘could be overcome, little by little, beginning with persuading people to just taste it.” Hope you weren’t eating breakfast.