The Ethical Agriculturalist: A Blog by R.A.B.
industrial farming is bankrupt. I Think it's the opportunity of a lifetime.
R.A.B.
So, we recently had an election. And the climate-change deniers (and those who think it's not an issue regardless of whether it's happening) seem to have won.
Throughout the campaign, there was so little discussion of global warming in both major parties that anyone who has been living under a rock for the past twenty years and therefore has no knowledge of how sea-level rise is already flooding coastal communities in the United States, or how warmer winters are leading to the spread of tropical diseases, or even that 15 of the past 16 years have been the warmest on record would be forgiven for thinking that something called the greenhouse effect had not, in fact, been discovered in the 1820s, nor that prominent scientists such as Svante Arrhenius and Alexander Graham Bell (you know, the inventor of the telephone?) have been warning of the effects of burning fossil fuels since the late 1800s. These same rock-dwellers might have even missed the investigative reports published in the LA Times describing how Exxon executives knew, forty years ago, that their business was causing global warming. They might not have known about the ongoing investigations by five state Attorneys General to bring a case against the oil giant's ongoing commitment to heating the planet even further, which Exxon is attempting to block at this moment. Even if you haven't been living under a rock you might have missed all of this news, too, because who wants to pay attention to such depressing information? Its clear that many of our politicians were also content to pretend ignorance of global warming or its threat to humankind. But that in no way excuses us from recognizing the reality that on January 20, a man who disbelieves in climate change, along with a team of executives with a vested interest in ignoring the issue, will be taking over our federal government. They will be in a position to destroy much of the progress that Obama has made on climate change, including backing out of the Paris climate agreement, re-issuing a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline (and presumably other large oil pipelines in the future), and reverse clean-air restrictions on fossil fuel power plants. The president-elect has already named a climate change denier, Myron Ebell, to lead the EPA. Despite evidence to the contrary, Mr. Ebell contends that climate change will not be a problem for at least a hundred years and is committed to dismantling the EPA's regulatory power. Not a problem if you believe that fossil fuel energy expansion is not a great threat to human health and survival, but most of us, regardless of our state of denial, already know that this is an untenable position. This is what we chose. Though it was barely mentioned in the mainstream news, this vote was a referendum on the climate policies enacted over the past eight years under a President who believes in government doing what it can to protect its people from the damaging effects of profit-driven businesses with no regard for our health and safety. While you weren't paying attention, America decided to ignore its best interests for the interests of a con artist who played to our worst impulses in an effort to win, by any means possible. We chose a man who is himself a profit-driven business with no regard for the health and safety of the people he exploits. This is his strategy. This is what he does. This is what we chose.
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