Sunday, April 30, 2017

New York Times Opinion By Bill McKibben: Trumpism Eternal?

                The New York Times, otherwise known as “The Truth,” recently published an op-ed by Bill McKibben, in which McKibben soberly and rationally considered the possible effects of President Trump’s policies on global warming.
                He began by stating: “President Trump’s environmental onslaught will have immediate, dangerous effects…” His “environmental onslaught?” He is considering backing away from some of the more economically devastating new regulations on energy use and production, yes…and maybe easing a punitive restriction or two on mining and coal companies. Mr. McKibben, however, makes it sound like Trump’s personally spewing agent orange into Central Park and plowing down the cherry trees around the Reflecting Pool… that he thinks could be put to better use housing nuclear waste or raw sewage. One congers up an image of a crazed president Trump, in the arctic, frantically whacking baby seals over the head with a nine-iron while shouting, “Melt, damn it! Melt!” at the remaining ice shield.
                A bit later in his scribbling he says that Trump’s policies will have their greatest effect on “Real people (the poorest and most vulnerable people).” I’m guessing Mr. Bill doesn’t fall into that category, but, ironically enough, quite a few Trump supporters do. Many of those in Appalachia, for example, coldly and calculatedly thrown out of work due solely to liberal’s desire to shut down mining and extraction industries, were demonstrably vulnerable and are now poor.
                A few paragraphs after claiming Trump’s “onslaught” will have “immediate” and dangerous consequences, McKibben states, “The effects will be felt not immediately but over decades and centuries and milleniums (sic).” Consistency is overrated, anyway. (In fact, it may well now be frowned upon in college composition classes as a relic of regressive, white, patriarchal, Western Civilization).
                McKibben avers that Trump’s policies will accelerate the melting of ice in the polar regions, ominously stating: “The nations that will be submerged won’t sink beneath the waves on his watch, but they will sink.” Nations? I thought Obama stopped the rising of the seas.
                He then claims, “It’s time itself that he’s stealing from us…” (Did he filch your Rolex?). Yet, in conclusion, he contends: ”But even when we vote him out of office, Trumpism will persist, a dark stratum in the planet’s geological history. In some awful sense, his term could last forever.”
                Forever? And I was worried he was going to be impeached.

                

No comments:

Post a Comment