A future where water and food will generate major conflicts

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos referenced reports from NASA’s Earth Observatory and NPR to note July 2021 was the hottest month in human history. Not just the hottest July, the hottest month. In all of human history. And sometime soon we may wish for its coolness. Sumner then discusses some of the horrible things that will likely affect the climate. He concluded with:

The assessment of the IPCC study is that the best outcome looking forward is a 3.1° F increase in temperature. That’s a change that will generate significant, lasting impact, including producing rising sea levels and lasting droughts that could make cities currently home to millions of Americans, and hundreds of millions around the world, unlivable. But at the other end of the scale, the possibility is a world that’s 7° warmer in just the next few decades. That’s a path to an Earth that’s genuinely unrecognizable—and to a future where water, food, and other resources won’t just generate refugees, but major conflicts. As has been said before, there’s no question that we can afford the cost of addressing the climate crisis, because we definitely can’t afford the cost if we don’t.

Leah McElrath tweeted a video from ABC News Prime about the wild fires in Siberia. We’ve heard a lot about the fires in the American West – the number and the size. Fires in Siberia are bigger than all the fires in the rest of the world combined. This report is from the province of Yakutia, which is along the Arctic Ocean and much of it north of the Arctic Circle. In winter Yakutia is the coldest inhabited place on earth. This year Yakutia has record heat and record drought, and 10 times more fires than usual. Smoke has reached Alaska and the North Pole. The fires aren’t being fought very well because they’re hard to get to, there aren’t enough firefighters, and there isn’t enough equipment. The region warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. The fires are releasing large quantities of CO2, which makes the global warming problem worse. In another tweet McElrath wrote:

Too many people have shown themselves unwilling to do a bare minimum to protect themselves and others from a contagion. How are we going to tackle global warming with our current mindset? The survival of humanity depends on a shift in perspective at the level of the collective.

Greta Thunberg tweeted:

The “code red” IPCC report came out a week ago. Since then not one politician has been held accountable. Not one politician has been asked how they are going to act in line with this. ... As long as we continue to ignore the actual content and the root causes of the climate crisis we will not be able to avoid the worst consequences. And by doing so we are giving a death sentence to countless of people, especially in the most affected areas. But remember; as soon as we decide to treat the climate crisis like a crisis - everything can change overnight. We can still make the seemingly impossible possible.

I think since Friday practically everything on NPR shows Morning Edition (and their weekend equivalents) and All Things Considered has been about Afghanistan and the swift collapse of the government and takeover by the Taliban (they did make a little room to mention the earthquake in Haiti). With two hours in the morning and another two in the evening the catastrophe can be examined from a lot of different angles. There are a lot of other sources to get the latest on Afghanistan, such as doom scrolling (I now understand better what that means) through Leah McElrath’s Twitter feed as she shows and discusses the horrible situation at the Kabul airport and elsewhere in the country. I don’t want to say a lot about Afghanistan – other than What Were They Thinking? – because it all seems so obvious. However, there are a few things to say here and there. I heard one angle on NPR this morning that is worth sharing, though I can’t find it now. The guest talked about how the US government, which has been corrupted by rich donors, didn’t create a democracy in Afghanistan, they created a corrupt government. And why would a soldier in the field facing Taliban fighters want to give his life for a corrupt government? Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, had several quotes about our 20 year war. First is Jeff B on Twitter. He said the real author of this disaster isn’t Biden or the nasty guy. It’s George W. Bush.

Bush could have set a much more limited mission for American military power: get Bin Laden, exterminate al Qaeda. Instead it turned to nation-building with no real understanding of the geopolitics of the region. And then he turned to Iraq, compounding the historic error.

In response to a tweet blaming the problem on Biden and the nasty guy, Brian Rosenwald replied:

Again, this type of statement deliberately ignores something crucial: George W. Bush’s flailing in Iraq deprived this far more justified war of crucial public support. And has any politician in either party really explained to the public the need to stay there indefinitely?

Turning to the pandemic, Dworkin also quoted Helen Ubiñas of the Philadelphia Inquirer about anti-mask protesters. The quote ends with a question by Jason Arena.

“We will find you!” one of the especially deranged dads yelled as he and others screamed at the medical professionals, blocking their cars and berating them as they tried to drive away. Yo, tough guy, that would sound a lot more ominous if we didn’t already know where to find most doctors and nurses these days — at a hospital, probably near you, trying to save the lives of the unvaccinated. “If you don’t trust the medical field to prevent you from getting it, why do you trust them to cure you from it?”

Sumner of Kos reported that Miguel Cardona, Secretary of Education, is going around Florida Gov. DeathSentence by sending $7 billion, the part in the American Rescue Plan Act designated for Florida’s schools, directly to the schools. Dr. Ashish Jha tweeted:

Today, the 5 most vaccinated states (14M people) had 580 people in hospital, 12 deaths In the 5 least vaccinated states (16M people)? 6,600 hospitalized, 104 deaths Per capita, least vaccinated states have 10X hospitalizations and 7X deaths So yeah, vaccines are working