The Paris environmental agreement is the absolute minimum that might conceivably save us. Trump has pulled out and Axios gloats scoop! Come, come. Trump signaled what he was for when he named the head of ExxonMobile, Secretary of State. Trump slapped environmentalism in the face when he stocked the government with climate deniers. Trump abolished any mention of global warming on the EPA website.
Of course, it's unspeakable
Much of what Trump does is not a subject for polite conversation. We can see the situation as a divine judgment on our unwillingness to think ahead.
Or we can assume, with some assurance, that we will not act until it becomes prohibitive not to. That means we will in about two decades have to deal with inevitable disruptions.
Trump is pulling U.S. out of Paris climate deal via @axios https://t.co/txjuqB5bqL
— Stephen C. Rose (@stephencrose) May 31, 2017
How will our world end?
We used to say the world would end in fire or ice. A more likely scenario is that it will end in tech or catastrophe. Tech could literally save us but by ending the world as we know it. It would take us beyond our present car-oil-one-percent economy into a better or worse future depending on what tech we are talking about.
Catastrophe would simply be much the same world as now suffering the predictable consequences of warming with more weather mayhem and shrinking coastlines -- like a fifteen round fight that enervates both opponents.
Probably both tech and catastrophe will be the big players and Trump will be the one who showed us the futility of the present system. Or he might prevail and create a successor to what we hoped would become a humane democracy.
We are in a war
Wars can happen when there are too many pieces of a life and death puzzle. Too many to fit together in time to surmise the whole picture.
We literally do not know what could happen day by day. It tells on the psyche. It wears thin. This or that piece will not easily fit with the piece over there. I prefer to think we are in a virtual war and that reality is all and that reality's purposes are good. We can defeat evil.
Reality is what we do
There is a twist to the thinking above.
It turns out that we influence reality, we make the history. So it really does come down to how many think this or that. I have tried to assess President Trump's problems in the order of their importance. The problem is it gets worse the closer you get to the truth. We face a world filled with headlines that distract us from serious thinking. The most serious thought is internal. It is what you and I will actually do. As we think so we will become.
