THE HAMMER OF THOR… AND LIZ AND BARBRA AND GEORGE AND KAMALA
Lately, I’ve returned to my roots in investigative journalism. I’m trying to get to the bottom to a recurrent episode of collective madness where every four years a marauding posse of celebrities, media figures, and supreme court justices go rampaging through the political landscape w...
If anyone ever deserved to lose an election it was Ken Cuccinelli in his bid to be governor of Virginia. In a repulsive display of abuse of power, he had earlier used his position as the state's attorney general to pursue a witch hunt against the distinguished climate scientists Michael Mann. Cucinnelli's over-reaching in this vendetta came back to bite him. Turned off by his denialist postion on climate change and by his extreme stance on other social issues, a number of Republican donors, who had backed earlier GOP candidates for governor, refused to contribute to his campaign. Despite the fact that his opponent, Terry McAuliffe, was a Washiington insider who could be tied to Obama and the hapless launch of Obamacare, Cuccinelli couldn't raise the money to match Democratic spending in the final days of the campaign. One sparrow does not make a spring, but it is refreshing to see that some GOP donors are beginning to push back against the anti-science elements that have dominated the party. The GOP once championed environmental issues. Perhaps there is hope that the party will yet recognize that global warming will not discriminate between Democrats and Republicans.
The American Meteorological Society names Fire and Flood its book of the year for 2023, awarding it the Louis J Batton Author's Award.
"Eugene Linden wrote his first story on climate change, for Time magazine, in 1988; it was just the beginning of his investigative work, exploring all ramifications of this impending disaster. Fire and Flood represents his definitive case for the prosecution as to how and why we have arrived at our current dire pass, closing with his argument that the same forces that have confused the public’s mind and slowed the policy response are poised to pivot with astonishing speed, as long-term risks have become present-day realities and the cliff’s edge is now within view.
Starting with the 1980s, Linden tells the story, decade by decade, by looking at four clocks that move at different speeds: the reality of climate change itself; the scientific consensus about it, which always lags reality; public opinion and political will, which lag farther still; and, arguably, most importantly, business and finance. Reality marches on at its own pace, but the public will and even the science are downstream from the money, and Fire and Flood shows how devilishly effective monied climate-change deniers have been at slowing and even reversing the progress of our collective awakening. When a threat means certain but future disaster, but addressing it means losing present-tense profit, capitalism's response has been sadly predictable.
Now, however, the seasons of fire and flood have crossed the threshold into plain view. Linden focuses on the insurance industry as one loud canary in the coal mine: fire and flood zones in Florida and California, among other regions, are now seeing what many call climate redlining. The whole system is teetering on the brink, and the odds of another housing collapse, for starters, are much higher than most people understand. There is a path back from the cliff, but we must pick up the pace. Fire and Flood shows us why, and how." From Catalog Copy
