Combining Nightmares

 CLIMATE CHANGE  and the pandemic should, at some point, be discussed at the same time and in the same place because they are America's current twin plagues, both are reaching catastrophic proportions right about now, and because they are related. Both became part of the human experience because the human species brought them into its society. Humans are responsible for both climate change and the pandemic, but have an opportunity to solve both problems. with regard to both disasters, it must be noted that the progressive attitude towards them, and progressives solutions, are correct, and the conservative attitude, and conservative responses, are entirely wrong. Progressives have been warning about looming climate change for decades, while conservatives generally ridiculed and dismissed the warnings. Now, this summer, climate change is becoming extremely obvious. Global warming has been evident for decades, predicted for centuries, and is now more obvious than ever, with each year hotter than the previous and weather patterns becoming increasingly extreme and wildly unpredictable. And still, shockingly, a large part of the American conservative community continues to take the dismissive Donald Trump approach, that climate change is either a hoax, or that it is happening, but is entirely caused by natural forces; nature changes the climate anyway, and humans are far too puny and small to ever affect the planetary climate. This viewpoint is demonstrably false, and crazy. To notice which end of the political spectrum is responsible for the current resurgent pandemic, simply look at a map of the United States showing red states, red counties, vaccination rates, and instances of Covid 19 infection. IN the counties and states won by Trump in the presidential election, the vaccination rate is well below average, and the rate of infection well above average. The reverse is true in states with majority progressive populations. The jury is no longer out: the verdict is in. The conservative attitude and response to both climate change and the Covid 19 pandemic has been and remains catastrophic, catastrophic in the sense that completely false beliers have resulted in not only a massive failure within the conservative community to take the necessary action to mitigate these twin disasters, but conservative policies have proven disastrous, in contributing to the spread of the epidemic, its death and disease, and in allowing climate change to go unchecked, the conservative refusing to support necessary policies to reverse it. Conservatism has historically been a backward looking ideology, resistant to progress, but our current variety of right wing ideology is more harmful than ever, doing great damage to the planet and to humanity, and must be defeated and destroyed.