AN OP-ED
By Daniel Zeigler
OCTOBER 22, 2019
“Climate Change is the most important issue we face,” according
to the Secretary General of the U.N., Antonio Guterres. Richmond
Times reported on, Oct. 18, 2019, that Climate Change will not be on
the agenda at the 2020 G-7 Summit, according to the Trump White
House. If Trump gets his way, the World’s most important leaders
will meet in 2020, and not deliberate on the most perilous problem
in the World, today. Mr. President, we respectfully tweet: ‘you are
an idiot.’
In this article, the Times reported that ‘France, Italy, Japan,
Canada, Great Britain and Germany are raising concerns that Climate
Change will be left out of the meeting.’ These leaders have
apparently read the tea leaves from their alarmed and protesting
citizenry. The Times article quoted the French Finance Minister,
Brun Le Maire, as stating: “the first matter of concern for our
populations in Europe and the U.S. is Climate Change; I really think
that the responsibility of the most powerful states around the world
is to address the issue of concern to our populations.” Le Maire asks
additionally, “What would the relevance of the G-7 summit be, if
these leaders did not address the most important topic of the day?”
Can we vote this Minister in as our new, prescient President?
If Webster was fishing for a new illustration of absurd, it couldn’t
do better than Trump’s indifferent idiocy about Climate Change. His
improvident vision for America borders on derelict madness, or
maybe worse, dereliction of duty(by the Commander and Chief no
less). He kept the discussion of Climate Change out of this year’s G-
7 Summit, too. Incredulously, he also pulled out of the Paris Climate
Accord before that; and intends to increase production of fossil fuels,
which any fool knows, drives Climate Change.
The severity of the Climate Change crisis could not be greater. A
consortium has been organized, just recently, called Covering
Climate Now, consisting of 250 newsrooms in 32 countries, with a
combined reach of 1 billion people, to attempt to ameliorate this
monstrous problem. Apparently, from what Trump has not done
about Climate Change, it will take the sound speakers used by
Metallica, placed in the oval office, to get his seemingly blinded
attention.
What sign from above is Trump waiting for? Nine out of the ten
hottest days have occurred during the last 15 years, with records
going back to 1880. One might suppose that Trump’s plan is for all
of us to go to the beach on the really hot days.
What about the dire concerns of our globally radicalized youth;
radicalized because, as Greta Thunberg, the sixteen-year-old
Swedish Climate Activist said, to the leaders of the world, “you have
failed us.’ With those words we can understand why the terrified
youth of the world are marching, everywhere, as fervently as they
are tossing and turning in their tremulous dreams. Once again,
Thunberg, the vociferous tribe’s spokesperson, said caustically and
ever so sadly, “you have stolen my dreams.”
She bluntly railed, from the U.N. pedestal, against the leaders of
the world, with a pugnacious grimace, repeatedly saying, “How dare
you,” fail to act on our behalf. Her plaintive howl was for a judicious
resolution to Climate Change. She was implicitly saying, we are your
children: ‘remember you do not inherit the Earth from your
ancestors; you borrow it from your children.’ Let us in the U.S. make
a chorus of Thunberg’s chant: ‘How dare you, Trump, ignore the
sinking ship of state, and the children on it, as the sky fills with
carbon dioxide.’
As I have already said, Thunberg is from Sweden, and after
listening to her speak, a cross between Alice in Wonderland and
Margret Thatcher of Great Britain, pint-size with a petite
comportment, her visceral anger is all the stature she needs; she
may have been from the land of neutrality but she is not neutral; she
is a fierce opponent of mankind’s complacency. Trump, you may
have impulsively withdrawn from Syria, but you are not going to be
able to retreat so recklessly from addressing Climate Change. If
nothing else, Thunberg will expose your poisonous lassitude like
Rachel Carson did pesticides.
That’s a weapon against Climate Change we don’t have yet, an
expose like Silent Spring. The lack of legislative action is the cry of
the youth in the streets. Silent Spring was published in September
of 1962, and by the end of the year, 40 bills had been introduced in
State Legislatures for the regulation of pesticides. Shakespeare
wrote that some of the slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune(youth’s treacherous birthright) were the law’s delay and the
insolence of office. Silent Spring made swift inroads against both of
those resistances to progress. Trump, your obstructions to fighting
Climate Spring now, when it is achievable, and your
contemptuousness of the youth who are not waiting any longer for
action, is not less than a crime against humanity, which will
cripplingly haunt your legacy, if nothing else does, first.
Winston Churchill said at the start of WWII, a war not unlike our
engagement with Climate Change: “We shall fight in the seas and
oceans; we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength
in the air, and defend our (land), whatever the cost may be; we shall
fight on the beaches, fight in the fields and streets, fight in the hills;
we shall never surrender.” Trump, the children of this world are not
waiting for you to act. They have their marching orders. They will
march on your White House like the conquering soldiers they intend
to be, and fulfill the words prophetic words of Churchill: “I have…full
confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the
best arrangements are made…we shall prove ourselves…able to
defend our(homes) and to ride out the storm(we face)…and outlive
the menace of (climate change).”
AUTHOR ID: Daniel Zeigler is working on a cli-fi novel-in-progress about climate change risks and issues and he hopes his book will be received by readers and critics as a new kind of ''SILENT SPRING'' [by Rachel Carson] about climate change. He lives is Virginia.
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