Is the Human Race on a Suicide Mission?

That would be exactly what all the people in smaller nations want. If one thing is certain with large scale (nuclear) holocaust, I think it would be that no one would be assured of escaping alive.

Who said anything about attacking military installations? Why is that relevant to what I said?


I explained it. The point is that some people seem to want to attack others, but they don't want to incur anti-terrorism responses, so they do so as covertly as possible to avoid retaliation.


My guess is that there is some sort of drug-induced hypnotism used to block true information retention and supplant it with whatever story is implanted in their heads to confess during interrogations.

How much drugs and torture do you suppose it takes to render the human mind/memory untraceable?

There would be some justice and efficacy to it... Holding people accountable and solving the problem.

I acknowledge that a few hundred million people would meet an untimely death, and that's bad alright, but that's going to happen anyway as a result of global warming. Might as well be the main guilty parties, no?

They are not 'the main guilty parties.' The world is divided into nations, but the global economy is a single economy. The national citizenship/identity you hold has little to do with the role you play in global supply chains and other chains of cause and effect.

The sins that are causing climate change are as diverse as what we do as consumers, how we spend our money, how much heating/cooling we use, how much we buy, how much we spend to stimulate the economic activities elsewhere that cause climate change, etc.

Everyone in the world benefits economically from the US and Chinese economies. Even poor people in the developing world may have access to certain products and privileges because of economic activities that are releasing CO2 and causing deforestation and obstructing reforestation.

Some people might work harder than others to reduce their carbon footprint and otherwise live more sustainably, but that doesn't mean we're innocent by any stretch, and what you do as an individual is the issue, not what nation you subscribe to as citizen and/or ethnically identify with as expat.

If other nations manage to reduce their carbon footprint, so can the US. If the US withdraws from any international effort to curb GHG emissions and keep on pumping CO2 in the atmosphere like there was no tomorrow, then the US as a whole are collectively responsible, Sodoma and Gomora style. They are also guilty of trying to deny the effect of their wrongdoings for decades.

Their anihilation would thus be a just and efficient way out of this mess. At least it would be more just than the US pulling the rest of the world with them in the abyss.

The Depravity of Climate-Change Denial
Risking civilization for profit, ideology and ego.

By Paul Krugman
Nov. 26, 2018

The Trump administration is, it goes without saying, deeply anti-science. In fact, it’s anti-objective reality. But its control of the government remains limited; it didn’t extend far enough to prevent the release of the latest National Climate Assessment, which details current and expected future impacts of global warming on the United States.

True, the report was released on Black Friday, clearly in the hope that it would get lost in the shuffle. The good news is that the ploy didn’t work.

The assessment basically confirms, with a great deal of additional detail, what anyone following climate science already knew: Climate change poses a major threat to the nation, and some of its adverse effects are already being felt. For example, the report, written before the latest California disaster, highlights the growing risks of wildfire in the Southwest; global warming, not failure to rake the leaves, is why the fires are getting ever bigger and more dangerous.

But the Trump administration and its allies in Congress will, of course, ignore this analysis. Denying climate change, no matter what the evidence, has become a core Republican principle. And it’s worth trying to understand both how that happened and the sheer depravity involved in being a denialist at this point.

Wait, isn’t depravity too strong a term? Aren’t people allowed to disagree with conventional wisdom, even if that wisdom is supported by overwhelming scientific consensus?

Yes, they are — as long as their arguments are made in good faith. But there are almost no good-faith climate-change deniers. And denying science for profit, political advantage or ego satisfaction is not O.K.; when failure to act on the science may have terrible consequences, denial is, as I said, depraved.

The best recent book I’ve read on all this is “The Madhouse Effect” by Michael E. Mann, a leading climate scientist, with cartoons by Tom Toles. As Mann explains, climate denial actually follows in the footsteps of earlier science denial, beginning with the long campaign by tobacco companies to confuse the public about the dangers of smoking.

The shocking truth is that by the 1950s, these companies already knew that smoking caused lung cancer; but they spent large sums propping up the appearance that there was a real controversy about this link. In other words, they were aware that their product was killing people, but they tried to keep the public from understanding this fact so they could keep earning profits. That qualifies as depravity, doesn’t it?

In many ways, climate denialism resembles cancer denialism. Businesses with a financial interest in confusing the public — in this case, fossil-fuel companies — are prime movers. As far as I can tell, every one of the handful of well-known scientists who have expressed climate skepticism has received large sums of money from these companies or from dark money conduits like DonorsTrust — the same conduit, as it happens, that supported Matthew Whitaker, the new acting attorney general, before he joined the Trump administration.

But climate denial has sunk deeper political roots than cancer denial ever did. In practice, you can’t be a modern Republican in good standing unless you deny the reality of global warming, assert that it has natural causes or insist that nothing can be done about it without destroying the economy. You also have to either accept or acquiesce in wild claims that the overwhelming evidence for climate change is a hoax, that it has been fabricated by a vast global conspiracy of scientists.

Why would anyone go along with such things? Money is still the main answer: Almost all prominent climate deniers are on the fossil-fuel take. However, ideology is also a factor: If you take environmental issues seriously, you are led to the need for government regulation of some kind, so rigid free-market ideologues don’t want to believe that environmental concerns are real (although apparently forcing consumers to subsidize coal is fine).

Finally, I have the impression that there’s an element of tough-guy posturing involved — real men don’t use renewable energy, or something.

And these motives matter. If important players opposed climate action out of good-faith disagreement with the science, that would be a shame but not a sin, calling for better efforts at persuasion. As it is, however, climate denial is rooted in greed, opportunism, and ego. And opposing action for those reasons is a sin.

Indeed, it’s depravity, on a scale that makes cancer denial seem trivial. Smoking kills people, and tobacco companies that tried to confuse the public about that reality were being evil. But climate change isn’t just killing people; it may well kill civilization. Trying to confuse the public about that is evil on a whole different level. Don’t some of these people have children?

And let’s be clear: While Donald Trump is a prime example of the depravity of climate denial, this is an issue on which his whole party went over to the dark side years ago. Republicans don’t just have bad ideas; at this point, they are, necessarily, bad people.

Thanks for Krugman's article.

Look at the current situation with the trade war and tariffs: The EU and China are upset because they aren't getting to ship goods to the US, many of which are cars and car parts. How can these investors sell the means of pollution to US buyers without bearing responsibility for the emissions caused by what they're producing and selling and how those products are being used?


No, the people making money by trade with or within the US, with or without the Paris pact, are responsible for the emissions and pollution, as well as the people spending the money and those working for the money; regardless of where they are in the world.


That sounds like the same logic as bombing the World Trade Center to stop capitalism and stock market trading.

It is entirely possible that some people will come up with the idea that annihilating others will solve problems, but the reality is that it won't because the population always resumes growth and increases to beyond previous precedents.

The only way to solve unsustainability and climate change is to reform human economic and cultural practices so that they are supportive of the natural ecological and geological health/sustainability of the planet. Until that happens, it won't matter how many genocides or other acts of annihilation/terrorism are committed; though that fact will surely not stop anyone who wants to try from trying (i.e. because of stupidity and/or frustration).

Ok so it would only be a temporary fix, but that's better than nothing.

Because if any particular car manufacturer would withdraw from the US market, some other companies would fill in the space left in the US market. Individual economic actors don't really shape markets. Governments do through regulation.

Not necessarily. Temporarily-reduced populations of humans go back to using their ingenuity to further develop wasteful technologies, whose unsustainability they fail to anticipate because they are caught up in their present situation.

War and destruction aren't something you can rationalize. They happen because people get frustrated with trying to achieve progress. There's no reason to assume the future will be better because humans choose to kill/destroy each other than to let each other destroy the planet with industrialism. But at the same time, it's hard to convince humans not to creatively destroy each other in a situation where proper stewardship of resources and sustainability are being shirked and progress thwarted.

Something else you might want to consider is that the Paris accord is actually doing more to thwart progress toward sustainability and ecological/climate reforms than to help it. How is that possible, you ask? Answer: by allowing the people responsible for causing climate-destroying industrial activities to choose winners and losers by where and how they invest. E.g. by putting industrial factories in China and automotive markets in the US, they can make money for EU welfare states while lowering CO2 emissions there relative to China and the US, which makes them seem like the winners of the Paris accord, while in reality they are stimulating industry outside their countries by their investment/business activities.

So, because of that hypocrisy, some people might get angry and cause terrorism in Europe, but doing so won't induce any kind of positive reforms, i.e. because the people simply don't think in terms of changing outcomes by changing their investment behavior. Rather, some people do government and policy while other people do business, and as a result, the business people get better at working around regulations to achieve their goals, and the government/policy people get paid so they can enjoy the fruits of the economy the business people produce.

Yes, but governments can't effectively regulate because there are lobbyists and other interested parties who ensure lucrative markets don't get regulated out of making money.

So, ultimately people are responsible for the effects of their actions, even if there are other people willing to jump in and take their place when they withdraw from harmful activities.

Only if you allow them... Fight their influence and you might win.

The point is that regulation isn't a solution, and it makes it worse that so many people see it as one.

Government is the opium of the people.

Its a solid fact that industries would not do "THE RIGHT THING" were it not for regulations.

Think pollution
red lining
defective products
cheap and dangerous materials
effects to customer health and safety
pathogens in food products

LL lives in some bizarre fantasy world. People whom we call captains of industry live in gated communities or walled-in mansions, they employ private security firms with armed responders, and they certainly do not set up near their industrial operations. For them it's all about wealth and power (which are essentially the same thing) and they don't give a rat's ass about fair labor standards, environmental pollution and the living conditions of the hoi polloi.

That's self-defeating and alienating... You've been indocrtinated to think against your own interest, by lobbyist who want to rule your life. Government is collective action. It's what the nation makes of it. Just because Trump is bad doesn't mean all governments are bad.

They don't do the right thing when there are regulations. Look at all the regulations created during the Obama administration. Most just stimulated corporate expenditures to stimulate economic growth. Most people and businesses didn't change much in terms of their energy use/waste behavior. The economic culture is too normative and conformist to take the initiative in reducing their environmental impact/footprint, and business keeps finding ways to give them what they buy, tweaking and working around regulations to do so.


They only allow themselves to be regulated to the extent they are willing to change. If they don't want to change, they will thwart regulation in one way or the other. Business and government are in cahoots, not in conflict.

You can basically say the same thing about the middle and other lower classes. They just want to consume more, and they validate their sense of entitlement by looking at people who have more than them and shifting the blame to them so they can avoid reflecting on the effects of their own actions and inaction.

Trump is actually causing people to critically reflect on their own biases and failures. How many people who deny and/or ignore climate change in various ways are not having to see the flack Trump gets for it and rethink their own attitude?

Under a democrat, they are pacified into believing that the government is resolving all the problems, so they can just go on doing whatever they do to make and spend money and trust the government will stop them before they cause too much harm.

In reality, the government will always protect and serve the businesses making the money the public is supporting with their spending. And, what's more, the government will do whatever they need to to support those businesses while pretending to regulate them, in order to make people feel like they can trust the system; i.e. because that is better for business.

Basically the government is like an extra marketing department to whitewash business by making them seem like they are under control instead of being in control, which is what is really happening. It's like having a police force in an area where organized crime runs the economy. Crime doesn't want to get rid of police, because that could give people a sense that law and order are absent. Instead, they need to control the police to create the semblance of law and order so they can go on running things to their benefit.

Who can stop them? They control the money and the people aren't willing to say no to that money.