Until the last missile has been driven through a kindergarten

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos discussed a long line of officials who are convinced that Putin is misinformed about what Russian forces are doing in Ukraine. No one wants to give a tyrant band news. I’ve mentioned this idea in passing once or twice. The reason why the idea that Putin is ignorant is popular is because he still acts as if Russia is winning the war – he keeps going in spite of massive losses, he still looks for more troops to feed the meat grinder, and he still makes impossible demands at the negotiating table. If he really knew he might take reasonable actions. Sumner disagrees. The Russian people may be cut off from the internet and outside media but Putin is not. He knows.

The truth is that Putin is a monster. Has always been a monster. He’ll keep losing his own troops at a rate of 10-1 to Ukrainian losses. Because he’s a monster. He’ll keep shelling cities and killing civilians in an effort to gain the smoking ruin that was a city. Because he’s a monster. He’ll keep prosecuting this war right up until the last creaky tank is ablaze and the last missile has been driven through a kindergarten. Because he’s a monster. No one should be waiting for Putin to smarten up. He’s already destroyed the Russian economy. He’s already shattered the illusion of competence that surrounded the Russian military. In every real sense, he lost the war in Ukraine in the first 48 hours. Everything he’s doing now is for a purely domestic audience. He wants something he can wave as a “victory” before an audience which is ignorant of the truth. Putin likes it that way. You might even say he “loves the poorly educated,” because they can be easily manipulated. Keeping Russians ignorant gives Putin the only numbers he really needs.

Those numbers: His approval rating was 69% in January and is 83% now. Sumner then noted that as the war shifts from defense to offense the kind of weapons Ukraine needs from the West must also shift. And there is a shift. Britain is starting to send offensive weapons. Kos of Kos has been fond of NASA fire maps because in addition to spotting forest fires the maps are good at showing fires from active battles. And the maps around Kyiv show the front has gone quiet. There are just a few fires in the area on the Wednesday map and none in the Thursday map. Russia isn’t losing ground in the face of Ukrainian attacks. Russia is leaving. Kos noted the Ukrainians now face mop-up duty – finding and dismantling mines and clearing dead bodies. And both Ukrainian and world attention now turns to Donbas. During the eight years of the separatist fight both sides created trenches along the front – similar to the situation in WWI. Kos discussed what that means for both sides. Thankfully Ukrainian news is down to one page. Ari Shapiro of NPR discussed the far right’s support of the environmental movement. With the current Republican party heading towards the far right and full of climate deniers such support doesn’t seem possible. Here are some instances where far right and environmentalism do go together – with expected twists. The shooter in the mass shooting in El Paso in 2019 killed more than 20 and wounded more than 20 others. He said he was targeting Mexicans. He left behind a manifesto saying “If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can be more sustainable.” Overpopulation is a problem and does contribute to climate change. It is one thing misogynists refuse to discuss. But the answer is freedom of choice and birth control, not murder. I note the kind of people he thought should be gotten rid of. Some of those who support a southern border wall say it is necessary because those who try to cross leave six to eight pounds of trash in the desert, a threat to wildlife. Environmental organizations say the wall itself harms ecosystems. The Nazis included natural purity along with their racial purity. America’s environmental history is also racist. Native people had to be removed from some areas so the land could be preserved, to be pristine and protected. And give white people a place to go to escape racially mixed neighborhoods. Thankfully, organizations such as the Sierra Club are reviewing their history and messaging to confront their exclusionary past. They want to get rid of messages that sound environmental, but are actually very racist. But be careful. An apocalyptic view of climate change will be subverted by the far-right. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted a couple interesting tweets. The first is from Owen Jones and is about Anita Bryant who championed a few anti-gay laws a few decades ago by campaigning on protecting children.

Anita Bryant is still alive today, and has lived long enough to watch the anti-gay laws she championed be overturned, and US public opinion towards gay people dramatically change for the better. Her granddaughter is gay. There's a lack of appreciation today of how bitterly controversial gay rights was once deemed to be, how the gay rights movement was portrayed as a really dangerous, abusive, "militant" and violent rabble. This is exactly how trans rights is portrayed today.

Dworkin quoted James Surowiecki, who quoted Hannah Davis. First Davis:

New study shows white Americans who learn about Covid's racial disparities have: 1) reduced fear about Covid 2) reduced empathy for those vulnerable to Covid 3) reduced support for Covid protections White supremacy directly increases Covid's harms.

And Surowiecki:

This study speaks to why it’s politically wise in the US to frame social programs, or initiatives like canceling student debt, in universalist terms, rather than emphasizing their benefits to specific groups.

On to a bunch of posts that I grouped together, then didn’t have time to consider the whole group. I reported that some big banks are still big investors in fossil fuels. However, there are various financial and investment companies who have decided to not, or no longer, invest in fossil fuels. So Texas passed a law saying that if you refuse to do business with the fossil fuel industry the Texas state government and its various agencies will refuse to do business with you. April Siese of Kos reported that Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar sent letters to 19 companies asking them about their compliance with the new law. And he’s preparing to send out another hundred letters. Siese reported on a bill being considered by the Tennessee House. The bill, as Siese wrote, “allows the state to approve oil and gas projects and override county and municipal governments if they choose to veto such infrastructure.” Siese then lists how much money various Republican Tennessee legislators have been getting from oil companies. Oil companies and Republicans have been badgering Biden to cave to their demands which, they say, will lower high gas prices. Sen. Chris Murphy tweeted a rebuttal to their points: Domestic oil production has actually been rising gradually under Biden. Oil companies complain about Biden’s ban on new leases, bu they have thousands of leases they aren’t using. These companies have lots of non-Biden reasons to not increase production. They make decisions because of price, not patriotism. Half of the oil produced in America is sent overseas to be refined because it isn’t the right kind for American refineries. Chevron made $15 billion in 2021 – they could invest more in US production if they wanted to. In a post that’s a couple weeks old Hunter of Kos talked about oil prices dropping (and have gone up and down since then) and gave a few reasons. The big one is that increases in oil production cost a lot of money. And there’s no guarantee that prices will stay high enough long enough for that investment to pay off. For example, if Russia admitted that they’ve lost the war in Ukraine and go home, economic sanctions could be lifted and oil prices could drop. So a lot of the Republican commentary, which should be directed against the murderous Putin, is directed against whatever Democrat is in charge of something. Hunter added:

Oh, and oil company lobbyists are again barking that the real answer is to strip all these burdensome environmental regulations so that companies can pump oil even more cheaply than they already do. So you're going to be hearing that bulls--- repeated credulously in the media with little note that the people saying it are literally paid by the oil companies to go find reporters and tell them these things.

Meteor Blades of Kos discussed the “Marshall Plan” proposed by Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, which is heavily invested in the oil industry. The original Marshall Plan helped Europe rebuild after WWII. This Marshall Plan is to develop more domestic energy. Blades wrote it “sounds like a joke version of the Green New Deal.” The problem is this plan doesn’t promote clean energy. Siese reported:

UN Secretary-General António Guterres had harsh words for countries that are using their response to the Russia-Ukraine conflict as a means of pushing energy strategies that still rely on fossil fuels. “Countries could become so consumed by the immediate fossil fuel supply gap that they neglect or knee-cap policies to cut fossil fuel use. This is madness,” Guterres said in a keynote address Monday at The Economist Sustainability Week event. “Addiction to fossil fuels is mutually assured destruction,” he said. Guterres particularly took issue with “all of the above” policies that tap every energy source, no matter how damaging those fossil fuels may be.

That “all of the above” policy is what Sen. Joe Manchin is demanding to make sure fossil fuels stay in America’s energy mix.

Guterres explicitly called for the ending of oil and gas exploration and called coal a “stupid investment.” But he did not give up on the hope of properly mitigating climate change so the worst effects of the crisis would not become a reality.

Siese discussed a report out of the University of Manchester. The world has a 50% chance of reaching Paris Accord agreements if rich countries phase out oil and gas production by 2034 – 12 years from now. The not so rich countries also have timetables laid out by the report. Leah McElrath tweeted about a NASA report about earth’s Energy Imbalance (I don’t know what that means). Then McElrath gave the summary:

This is one of the most alarming things I’ve read about the climate crisis: It’s one thing to observe changes in temperature, but seeing the RATE of change TRIPLE in just two decades points toward catastrophic change sooner than we were even anticipating.

Joan McCarter of Kos, in a report from three weeks ago, discussed how Democrats are trying to prevent the oil industry from gouging Americans as prices rise because of the Russian invasion. That included discussing a windfall profits tax. McCarter wrote:

War in Ukraine or not, oil company profits are at seven- and eight-year highs and they want to keep them rising by exploiting this crisis. Oil supply isn’t the problem behind high prices. Big Oil is. Republicans will, of course, oppose any effort by Democrats to force the Big Oil profiteers to keep prices in check, just like they’ll fight all efforts by Democrats to use this crisis to promote homegrown alternative energy, and end our dependence on rogue states for our energy needs. The reality is Republicans want to do everything in their power to keep Americans feeling pain at the gas pump, because they think that helps them politically in the midterms. Which is downright unpatriotic.

In a post from three weeks ago Siese discussed many of the reasons oil companies are using to get what they want, which is an unregulated industry. A bunch of the industry titans were together at a conference – a Super Bowl of the worst polluters. I’ll let you read it. Bill in Portland, Maine, in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted late night commentary. This is one of them:

In Florida, the controversial ‘parental rights in education’ bill—also known as the 'don’t say gay' bill—was signed into law. Under the new law, a teacher can't explain to a second-grader that their governor is a dickhead. That kind of language is not allowed anymore. It's up to parents to explain that their governor is a dickhead. That's governor Ron DeSantis. His pronouns are hee and haw. —Jimmy Kimmel