Points, more

“Global warming should be called global heating, says key scientist.”  So said a newspaper headline.  I’ve been calling it that since 2009 in my “Global Heating: a primer,” so I’m provoked to unburden myself of a few more of the items I’ve encountered in reading.  Not all about climate and not all dire.  I agree with Anthony Barreiro’s comment that it’s better to leaven the alarming with the hopeful.

In fact, I don’t need to say anything about the Katowice climate conference, the promises made by governments (watered down because of obstruction from the U.S., Russia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait), and the wave of recent reports by massive international groups of scientists that we just must not let the rise in global heat reach 1.5 C.  You’ve read and heard those things, they loom over all other news like a – mountain over a molehill, you thought I was going to say, but I’ll say like a cat over a mouse.  It’s going to eat up all our other problems.

To start with some amusement:

Boris Johnson – who he?  I didn’t know, when I moved from America to Britain, and a friend said “You must lead a sheltered life!”  He is a clownish politician of the Old Etonian type, a loud Brexiteer, now hoping to oust Theresa May as leader of the (currently) ruling Conservative party.  The recent item was about three 25-year-old disused water-cannon trucks that he bought rom Germany’s police when he was mayor of London, in 2014.  They were to be refurbished and used for crowd-control.  The cost came to £322,834.71.  But water cannons had been banned for use in the U.K. except for Northern Ireland.  The present mayor has tried to sell them, but no one wants them and they had to be sold as scrap metal, with a loss to taxpayers of more than £300,000.

Apply this to America too.  If you live in a river or coastal plain, you may not get flood insurance.

Brexit: don’t say I didn’t tell you.

Gorge Soros proposes a European Union $35 billion “Marshall Plan for Africa“.  .  If the misery of some African countries could be abated, there could be a reduction of the sad “caravan” of migrants to Europe that is provoking xenophobic nationalism.

Air pollution, mainly in cities and caused by vehicles, cuts two years off average lifespan worldwide.

A team of “more than 50 economists, historians and former politicians from half a dozen countries,” led by Thomas Piketty, has set out a plan to extract funds from tax-dodging multinationals, millionaires, and carbon emissions, and use them to fund solutions for poverty, inequality, migration, and climate change.

President Macron of France seemed a humane exception to the wave of ignorant authoritarian nationalists coming to power around the world.  He’s dropped in popularity – for taxing dirty fuel.  So does he not know of, or can he not stop, the brutal destruction of refugee camps?  Where are these traumatized, starving, and shivering people to go?  If you for no reason confiscate someone’s tent, even if you’re a policeman, you’re a robber.

In a letter from a New Zealand friend:  “Good things are happening nationwide under the Labour-Greens-NZ First coalition government [of the popular, young, and humble prime minister Jacinda Ardern].  1 billion trees are being planted; social housing undertaken; regional development funds available to counter population growth in a few main centres and decline in towns and villages; higher numbers of nurses, teachers and police employed as well as unacceptable behaviour tackled in organisations ranging from law firms to elite sports.  Women, in particular, are speaking up and out!  An entire culture is being challenged for its practice of shoving matters of equity and sexual violation under the carpet.  Bullying and intimidation are also under the spotlight including in parliament.”

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