60 Minutes misses the point

Every winter when it gets especially cold the same pack of inane yappers sitting around on couches on Fox start yucking it up over what an obvious hoax Global Warming is because, damn it, it's cold outside. It would be so cool if they were right (no pun intended.) In fact I deeply hope that they are right, that this whole “global warming thing” is a huge hoax, just a hobby horse for “green” liberals and lefties and a rich source of government grants for bunch of pencil neck academics. Yet even if these Greenie Cassandras are just a bunch of “the sky is falling Chicken Littles," all this effort for renewable energy will not be for naught. It will still give us some more energy options, some of them even may be cheaper. What's wrong with that? Also what's wrong with not having oil tankers periodically split in half in the open ocean or deep sea oil rigs suddenly explode and kill millions of fish, birds and mollusks along with some hapless workers?  Plus name one country that depends on oil as its major source of revenue that is a functioning stable democracy? Also what's wrong with not having our water tables polluted with secret patented chemicals or triggering seismic actions by wholesale fracking of each and every geological formation that may contain oil or gas?

Yet, sadly, one would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to be aware of the mounting evidence from just a degree or two of warming that has already occurred – and we haven't seen anything yet. Ocean acidification, rising sea levels and methane release feedback loops have yet to really kick in. So it pained me to see a recent segment of 60 Minutes regretfully inform us that non-renewable energy is not making it in the market place. Hey, we don't mind spending $600B annually on military gadgets and weapons that are never subjected to any market based calculations, and often don't work. It's not about whether non-renewables are the next big investment opportunity (even if the Chinese have the patience to wait to see if it is.) Fracked natural gas and oil are certainly making a big splash on Wall Street. Put your money there.

But the tragedy is on a far deeper level than some CBS television show. Our so-called” leaders” (read: politicians with self-serving agendas) of all nations are letting us down. They can't resist the usual geo political distractions – keeping the rickety capitalist edifice running, petty turf battles (read: jockeying for imperialistic influence) and now bloody religious wars (Sunnites vs Shites vs Judaic extremists.) But we are running out of time.

Obama could have turned the tide. Instead of trying to reform our badly dysfunctional health care system first (which did need attention), he should have engaged in a full court press to confront this emerging global world historical catastrophe. Why not use the compelling need to phase out fossil fuels as a creative way to massively stimulate the economy which was acutely in trouble at the time – two birds with one stone. But instead of a FDR we got a Herbert Hoover. The Great Depression was not really ended until there was a massive, no-holds-barred deficit spending program to arm for WWII. 

 

Properly framed the American public could have been brought on board and given a crash course on the science behind this world war level crisis. Obama should have made such an effort. He could have confronted the troglodytes in the GOP head on. He had the credibility then. He had the wind at his back. He could have presented an ambitious, appealing (would provide many jobs), path breaking. paradigm-busting revitalization of the entire economy based on building a spanking new 21^st Century "green" infrastructure. FDR changed the conversation with the New Deal. Obama could have done it with a Green New Deal. With a really robust stimulus (urged by many economists at the time) it would have reversed the Great Recession (which we still have lingering effects of) and presented the United States as a global model for moving against this rift in the metabolism of entire planet's life support system. Instead he let the opportunity slip away.

So fast forward to now. With a meaningful confrontation of the global warming crisis seemingly in perpetual hiatus, why does 60 Minutes have to pile on and bring up the the whole sordid Solyndra affair again?   Moreover, other sources are saying that 60 Minutes got it wrong – there is actually a 97% success with these loans. Anyway enuf said. The producers of 60 Minutes seem to have decided to provide more typical mainstream media corporate "newspeak" fodder. Just like I did CNN I may have to check them off my list.