Who’s Responsible for Greenhouse Gasses? [Live Conversation]

Switching Gears: After two weeks of discussing the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, its initial onslaught and devastation around the world, the discovery of vaccines that offered a degree of protection to an unsuspecting world, but rather than being a panacea, Human nature undermined the benefits of the vaccines.

As the failed presidency of Donald Trump gave way to President Biden, the new administration was unable to get a handle on the virus because of mutations that became more virulent (Delta) and more communicable (Omicron).

The new presidency wrestled with the corporate and Republican-sponsored ideas of a “return to normalcy” which included opening businesses and schools despite the continued onslaught of coronavirus sickness and deaths in this nation and beyond.

Now that society has, for good or ill (and mostly ill in my opinion) decided to ignore the coronavirus and its assuredly endemic status, which will result in hundreds of thousands of deaths around the world every year, we return to the conversation around climate change and in particular “greenhouse gas emissions.”

In an article today from the Harvard Political Review we are asked to consider: Who’s Really Responsible for Climate Change? [https://harvardpolitics.com/climate-change-responsibility/]

“The article opens with: Climate change threatens to transform the world as we know it. At the current rate of global greenhouse gas emissions, climate change could displace two billion people due to rising ocean levels, cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars, and cause upwards of 250,000 additional deaths per year — all before 2100.” Worse than these simple facts are the gaslighting efforts of major corporations to push the blame for climate change into the laps of consumers as if the core of the GHG emissions lies in the laps of the citizenry rather than the powerful corporations who run this nation. The article continues:

“However, the focus on changing consumer behavior that this argument reflects misplaces responsibility for the GHG emissions driving the climate crisis on the individual consumer, conveniently ignoring the disproportionate climate impact of corporate interests.”

How much difference is there between the consumer GHG emissions and the corporate powers, the state-sanctioned entities who control the entire fossil fuel industry? Calling it an order of magnitude would be an understatement.

“In fact, only 100 investor and state-owned fossil fuel companies are responsible for around 70 percent of the world’s historical GHG emissions. This contradicts the narrative pushed by fossil fuel interests that individuals’ actions alone can combat climate change, as individual actions have minute effects relative to these emissions — average American households produce only 8.1 metric tons of carbon dioxide out of a total of over 33 billion tons globally.”

70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions are caused by 100 major organizations around the world.

• What can be done to address the gaslighting?
• How do we get people to understand the scope of the problem?
• What can we do to get corporations to begin to think about their industrial effects on the environment?
• Can individuals through financial and political action begin to make a change in time to prevent or mitigate some of the known and continuing deleterious environmental effects we have already seen and know are going to continue in the future?

Other references: US Military Pollution: The World’s Biggest Climate Change Enabler [https://earth.org/us-military-pollution/]

All that and more, with Thaddeus Howze and Carol Bluestein on Climate Change by the Elements!

It has been three years: have we learned anything which can help us defeat this viral scourge or are we doomed to dance this viral jig for a decade or more?

With your Hosts: Thaddeus Howze and Carol Bluestein at 5:00 PM PDT – 9:00 PM EDT.

A live-cast of The Good Men Project, produced by Lisa Hickey

Dial-in number: 1-701-801-1220
Access code: 934-317-242 (then press #)

You can also reach the show via your computer at:
https://www.startmeeting.com/wall/934317242

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This post is republished on Medium.

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