A Pause to Honor the Dead

I hate to fall prey to the ridicule of more enlightened sorts, but I can't help but feel that the Earth is alive and, well, taking action. You can only judge by the lights of your own experience, of course, but how many near misses before we get her hint? An earthquake that shifts the length of day and wobbles us on our axis and a tsunami that kills thousands and nearly causes a meltdown of Chernobyl proportions,  poisoning the Land of the Rising Sun for generations, just might be the cause for some reflection on everyone's part.
This is a moment when concerns for our planetary health have come to the fore. Many would have us believe that nuclear power is integral to our energy future, but there are other choices. Renewable energy: the wind, sun, geothermal and hydro, can provide all of our needs with existing technologies and the necessary upgrades to our grid infrastructure.
Here is a video from the Post Carbon Institute that puts it all into perspective. The take-away is that we will have to live within our means and plan for the future in an intelligent, (ie equitable) manner. As a people, I think we get that, whether Republican or Democrat in basic political disposition.

It will be a struggle, but justice will prevail in the end. It always does. Here is another video I showed Friday in my honors Spanish class. It is based on Neruda's epic poem Nuevo Canto a Stalingrado,  in honor of the Russian heroes of the battle of Stalingrad and the Allied forces and partisans who rose to the rescue of civilization.

Unreconstructed Krauthammer

I shouldn't be surprised by the unaccountability of right-wing blowhards for the positions they took on a host of issues during the Bush years. But given the demise of the Republican Party leadership as signified by the rise within the GOP of the likes of Rush Limbaugh and his ilk as serious spokesmen and not just media puppeteers, it behooves sober-minded individuals to pay close attention to the rants of fascistas of the airwaves such as Charles Krauthammer. I read his interview in Der Spiegel today on-line and was struck by the clear-minded, yet lunatic espousal of two relics of Bush era dogma, namely the requirement for unilateral exertion of imperial power in order to bring peace to the world, and the scientific uncertainty surrounding and therefore as-yet unclear need to do anything about global warming. Along with these was the underlying, rabid need to belittle any Obama administration leverage on reforming the country. Krauthammer cannot bear to concede the transformative effects of an Obama presidency so far and insists it's all about celebrity hype. Yes, he does foresee some sort of health care reform going forward, but that's the work of an "average" president. The big Maginot line, apparently, in the Republican psyche, is now the global warming crisis, where Obama's efforts to bring US carbon emissions down to acceptable levels must be doomed to failure. I hate to tell him, the writing is on the wall there as well. Cap and trade, baby, bring it on. There is an unfortunate bunch of chatter about geo-engineering from uninformed sources, and the right-wing continues to love the Dr. Strangelove allure of nuclear power, but the simple fact remains that the hard work of avoiding catastrophic climate change involves switching the global industrial economy onto the twin tracks of energy efficiency and renewables.