Acknowledging Reality

THE GOOD NEWS is that for the first time in twenty five years, the great heavily democratic state of California is not officially in a drought. Rather, is officially not in a drought. The bad news is that last year (2025) the world injected two point four percent more greenhouse gasses, mostly carbon, into the atmosphere than the previous year (2024). Unfortunately, the bad news far outweighs the good. The question regarding California is: how long will it remain adequately hydrated, before once again getting into another, perhaps even more prolonged drought primarily due to climate change? If this was a one thousand year droughts, as some have suggested, it may be awhile. Or so we hope. The ravaging wildfires which have plagued the Golden State for the past several decades with ever increasing severity and frequency seem for the time being to have died out as well, knock on wood. May the trend continue, but it won't. The drought and the wildfires will return, because climate change is getting worse fast. It also seems evident that most people have absolutely idea how fast, although even politically conservative old people will acknowledge that the climate has changed drastically during their lifetime. Conservatives, however, even those who acknowledge climate change, refuse to accept the glaringly transparent reality that global warming, climate change is not only very real and getting worse fast, but that it is at least partly, and maybe entirely caused by we humans and our materialistic style of living. We are the main cause of global warming. For one thing, we act like we automatically own all the land on Earth, and that other animals own none of it. How incredibly arrogant and self deceptive. The rate of the annual increase in carbon emissions is slowing down, down to "only" two point five percent last from much higher rates in previous years, and that is encouraging. Gradually, grudgigly, we seem to be weening ourselves off fossil fuels. Obviously the most harmful, horrible event that has impacted the attempt to limit global warming is the Trump administration, and the political movement and culture which engendered and sustains it. It almost seemsas if you can engage any intelligent, reasonably well educated Trump conservative in a conversation, and make them understand that climate change is realand thatthe cause is human carbon emissions. With careful, patience guidance, they can be educated. There are two kinds of peole in the world: tho ewho took high school chemistry, and those who did not. Generally speaking, the former kind accepts the reality of climate change, and the latter does not. We don't teach enough chemistry in America. "The priest dreads the advance of science like the witch dreads the approaching dawn" said Jefferson, correctly. Today no less than in Jefferson's day, conservatives, traditional thinkers have a strong tendency to suspect and often totally dismiss science and the scientific method. The search for knowledge descends into the sort of religious superstition and dogma which has plagued the word for centuries, still does, and seems poised to conetinue doing well into the future. This bizarre right wing denial and rewriting of reality that characterizes the entire MAGA movement, just as it characterizes all fascist movements, must be directly confronted and defeated, because denial of reality, no matter how appealing to the weak human mind, is, in the final analysis, harmful to human progress.