Left and Right talk.
Left: Finally, a President who puts money and action at the forefront of climate science! Biden just committed to giving more than eleven billion bucks per year to Indonesia and other countries to fight climate change.
Right: Really? That’s what gets you excited? How much of that money is yours? Do some math. Let’s see, if the average amount of tax Americans pay is a pinch over $20,000, then…click, click, click…it will require all the taxes from 550,000 Americans to fund the eleven billion each year. So, that money you put into the kitty—if I can count you as one of the 550,000 average taxpayers whose money is tabbed—will be going overseas. And you see nothing in that that is absurd?
Left: Not if it fights climate change. I’m willing to do my part.
Right: Again, really? Do you have $20,000 on you right now?
Left: No. But if you are talking about my taxes, you should realize that I pay them through a payroll deduction program, so I really never see that money anyway. And it’s not divided among just 555,000. It’s all taxpayers. Millions, not hundreds of thousands, of taxpayers.
Right: So, the government’s siphoning off $20,000 is painless for the average taxpayer? And, in addition, you must trust that some official getting your tax dollar in some foreign country will use the money precisely as the Biden Administration says it will.
Left: It’s what the eleven billion is for. And we have to start somewhere because climate change is an existential threat.
Right: Nice term. Have you actually thought about it? I mean, have you thought about what the term entails?
Left: Yes, existence as we know it will end.
Right: And this because…
Left: Because a warmer world will make tropical diseases spread, make hurricanes more dangerous, make winters colder and summers warmer, will make flooding more severe and droughts more prolonged, forest fires more widespread and crop failures more frequent, and…
Right: I get it. You are pretty sure that we’ll all die from Dengue while a hurricane interrupts our drought during an exceptionally hot summer right after a winter characterized by Arctic blasts that bury the American Upper Midwest in feet of snow that melts to flood the Mississippi valley during late frost springs—that is, if we don’t die in a forest fire along a coastline of rising seas.
Left: Go ahead. Mock. I’m following the science. You are a science denier.
Right: So, you are willing to give $20,000 directly to, say, Indonesia? You can say that your $20,000 goes to other projects, but the reality of the money distributed is that even though it comes from all of us, it still means that your $20,000 is in practice tagged for foreign aid centered on climate change. Would you commit $20,000? I can see it now. You get a call from Indonesia. “Hello, Mr. Left. Your distant relative just died and left you the fortune he made in oil, but before I can send it to you, I need to have your bank account number to acquire the $20,000 we’ll need to satisfy government regulations and fill out paper work.” And you will say over the phone, “Don’t you need my Social Security number, also?”
Left: NO, it’s not like that. There’s an agency. There are people who oversee the transfer of tax money to Indonesia or India or wherever. There are government officials in charge of the funds.
Right: And you don’t think that those funds—your money—will be misused or stolen? Do you know that the Secret Service had to recover $286 billion from fraudsters who stole from the Covid Relief money? * Imagine how much they did not recover. Billions more. But you have faith that your twenty grand will go to the right place to be administered by ethical people who with oil wealth of their own will curtail their use of oil.
Left: You don’t understand. Climate change is an existential threat.
Right: Who are you, Sartre? Existential? By that I assume you mean humanity will become extinct. Scary.
Left: Yes.
Right: Wouldn’t nuclear annihilation be more of an existential threat than climate change that might or might not affect all eight billion of us? Isn’t the threat of nuclear war a greater danger to humanity and, by the way, to climate? What about the sudden onset of a “nuclear winter” brought on by a total nuclear war? Because once it begins, there’s no one who is going to say, “Oh! I think we hit Russia or North Korea, or China with enough. I’m sure they won’t send any more bombs our way. We’ve made our point.”
Left: What’s that got to do with climate change mitigation?
Right: Well, if you insist on giving away $20,000 a year for the rest of your life, wouldn’t giving it to military allies (who would also find ways to steal) to discourage China from threatening them with nuclear war be a better use of the money? After all, that nuclear winter will change climate much faster than the slow burn of a couple of degrees Celsius over the course of centuries and a sea level rise of a meter over the course of 900 years. You know what? I wish you a long life. I wish you had such a long life that you could have witnessed the rise of sea level over the last 12,000 years, the first half of which would have been rather rapid—more rapid than now. And that warming occurred before humans drilled and mined.
Left: You just don’t understand. The money is going to wean countries off fossil fuels.
Right: Yeah, so you said. And I still say, “I don’t trust that they will use it thus. I don’t think they will accomplish what Americans have in reducing carbon emissions. China and India will continue to spew carbon into the atmosphere, and all your $20,000 per year for life will go for naught. China emits about ten billion tons of carbon per year, whereas the United States emits about five billion tons. India emits about half the U.S. output, but it has said it will switch to “green energy” only insofar as it gets aid to do so from wealthy countries and only insofar as the switch doesn’t inhibit economic growth. In other words, it wants subsidies from the U.S.
Left: But at least I will be trying to save human existence.
Right: And that’s it: “trying” based on climate models and an idea repeated so often that it has become the philosophical bedrock of the twenty-first century and a secular religion. Existential threat, nice catchphrase, repeated repeatedly.
Left: So, you don’t want us to do anything?
Right: Didn’t say that. But I certainly wouldn’t want to send my $20,000 to Indonesia or India or Nigeria. And I have to ask whether or not you would be as committed to climate change theory if someone came to your house and said that you had to give him $20,000 every year for the rest of your life. I can’t believe you would.
Left: But it’s the government. It’s part of a shared commitment. They know more than you.
Right: Sorry. Bureaucrats following people who get funding for saying “existential threat.” And the funding? Enforced by a tax-collecting authority. Spent by a government-gone-wild with spending that has put the country $30-plus trillion in debt. And nothing the money goes for will have any consequential effect except to make certain people wealthy on your and my dime. Or should I say, your personal 200,000 dimes—per year?
Left: You don’t care about the environment.
Right: And you don’t seem to care about your money. You have tens of thousands of people dying from fentanyl because of super-carbonizer China, but you are concerned about spending money to make Indonesia a green-energy country. You are not concerned that mining hundreds of tons of earth to get enough materials for a single electric car battery is more a threat to the environment than fossil fuels. Do you know an EV has to be driven about 60,000 miles before it begins to make a dent in its carbon footprint if one considers the mining, the transporting, and the manufacturing of the materials? You know that the solar panels and windmills are made in China which continues to open coal-fired power plants while the Biden Administration intends to shut down American coal-fired plants?
Left: You’re just a science denier.
Right: And you are wasting money while polluting the planet with mine tailings from heavy metal and rare earth mining and at the same time not doing anything to stop the Chinese from building more coal-fired plants.
Left: It’s a moral issue. I’m saving the planet for future generations.
Right: As I said, I wish you a long life. In ten years you will have given $200,000 to Indonesia and other countries; in 30 years your contributions will equal $600,000. Let’s hope that the world stays stable enough over that period to avoid nuclear winter; let’s hope no madman like Putin or Kim will unleash nuclear horror. As for me, I’d rather throw a little more carbon in the atmosphere and give my $20,000 to causes centered on practical safety, on the reduction in fentanyl deaths, for example, or on the military might that deters a nuclear attack.
Left: You’re hopeless. You just don’t understand.
*https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/secret-service-recovers-286-million-stolen-covid-relief-funds-rcna44886 Accessed November 15, 2022.
Left: Finally, a President who puts money and action at the forefront of climate science! Biden just committed to giving more than eleven billion bucks per year to Indonesia and other countries to fight climate change.
Right: Really? That’s what gets you excited? How much of that money is yours? Do some math. Let’s see, if the average amount of tax Americans pay is a pinch over $20,000, then…click, click, click…it will require all the taxes from 550,000 Americans to fund the eleven billion each year. So, that money you put into the kitty—if I can count you as one of the 550,000 average taxpayers whose money is tabbed—will be going overseas. And you see nothing in that that is absurd?
Left: Not if it fights climate change. I’m willing to do my part.
Right: Again, really? Do you have $20,000 on you right now?
Left: No. But if you are talking about my taxes, you should realize that I pay them through a payroll deduction program, so I really never see that money anyway. And it’s not divided among just 555,000. It’s all taxpayers. Millions, not hundreds of thousands, of taxpayers.
Right: So, the government’s siphoning off $20,000 is painless for the average taxpayer? And, in addition, you must trust that some official getting your tax dollar in some foreign country will use the money precisely as the Biden Administration says it will.
Left: It’s what the eleven billion is for. And we have to start somewhere because climate change is an existential threat.
Right: Nice term. Have you actually thought about it? I mean, have you thought about what the term entails?
Left: Yes, existence as we know it will end.
Right: And this because…
Left: Because a warmer world will make tropical diseases spread, make hurricanes more dangerous, make winters colder and summers warmer, will make flooding more severe and droughts more prolonged, forest fires more widespread and crop failures more frequent, and…
Right: I get it. You are pretty sure that we’ll all die from Dengue while a hurricane interrupts our drought during an exceptionally hot summer right after a winter characterized by Arctic blasts that bury the American Upper Midwest in feet of snow that melts to flood the Mississippi valley during late frost springs—that is, if we don’t die in a forest fire along a coastline of rising seas.
Left: Go ahead. Mock. I’m following the science. You are a science denier.
Right: So, you are willing to give $20,000 directly to, say, Indonesia? You can say that your $20,000 goes to other projects, but the reality of the money distributed is that even though it comes from all of us, it still means that your $20,000 is in practice tagged for foreign aid centered on climate change. Would you commit $20,000? I can see it now. You get a call from Indonesia. “Hello, Mr. Left. Your distant relative just died and left you the fortune he made in oil, but before I can send it to you, I need to have your bank account number to acquire the $20,000 we’ll need to satisfy government regulations and fill out paper work.” And you will say over the phone, “Don’t you need my Social Security number, also?”
Left: NO, it’s not like that. There’s an agency. There are people who oversee the transfer of tax money to Indonesia or India or wherever. There are government officials in charge of the funds.
Right: And you don’t think that those funds—your money—will be misused or stolen? Do you know that the Secret Service had to recover $286 billion from fraudsters who stole from the Covid Relief money? * Imagine how much they did not recover. Billions more. But you have faith that your twenty grand will go to the right place to be administered by ethical people who with oil wealth of their own will curtail their use of oil.
Left: You don’t understand. Climate change is an existential threat.
Right: Who are you, Sartre? Existential? By that I assume you mean humanity will become extinct. Scary.
Left: Yes.
Right: Wouldn’t nuclear annihilation be more of an existential threat than climate change that might or might not affect all eight billion of us? Isn’t the threat of nuclear war a greater danger to humanity and, by the way, to climate? What about the sudden onset of a “nuclear winter” brought on by a total nuclear war? Because once it begins, there’s no one who is going to say, “Oh! I think we hit Russia or North Korea, or China with enough. I’m sure they won’t send any more bombs our way. We’ve made our point.”
Left: What’s that got to do with climate change mitigation?
Right: Well, if you insist on giving away $20,000 a year for the rest of your life, wouldn’t giving it to military allies (who would also find ways to steal) to discourage China from threatening them with nuclear war be a better use of the money? After all, that nuclear winter will change climate much faster than the slow burn of a couple of degrees Celsius over the course of centuries and a sea level rise of a meter over the course of 900 years. You know what? I wish you a long life. I wish you had such a long life that you could have witnessed the rise of sea level over the last 12,000 years, the first half of which would have been rather rapid—more rapid than now. And that warming occurred before humans drilled and mined.
Left: You just don’t understand. The money is going to wean countries off fossil fuels.
Right: Yeah, so you said. And I still say, “I don’t trust that they will use it thus. I don’t think they will accomplish what Americans have in reducing carbon emissions. China and India will continue to spew carbon into the atmosphere, and all your $20,000 per year for life will go for naught. China emits about ten billion tons of carbon per year, whereas the United States emits about five billion tons. India emits about half the U.S. output, but it has said it will switch to “green energy” only insofar as it gets aid to do so from wealthy countries and only insofar as the switch doesn’t inhibit economic growth. In other words, it wants subsidies from the U.S.
Left: But at least I will be trying to save human existence.
Right: And that’s it: “trying” based on climate models and an idea repeated so often that it has become the philosophical bedrock of the twenty-first century and a secular religion. Existential threat, nice catchphrase, repeated repeatedly.
Left: So, you don’t want us to do anything?
Right: Didn’t say that. But I certainly wouldn’t want to send my $20,000 to Indonesia or India or Nigeria. And I have to ask whether or not you would be as committed to climate change theory if someone came to your house and said that you had to give him $20,000 every year for the rest of your life. I can’t believe you would.
Left: But it’s the government. It’s part of a shared commitment. They know more than you.
Right: Sorry. Bureaucrats following people who get funding for saying “existential threat.” And the funding? Enforced by a tax-collecting authority. Spent by a government-gone-wild with spending that has put the country $30-plus trillion in debt. And nothing the money goes for will have any consequential effect except to make certain people wealthy on your and my dime. Or should I say, your personal 200,000 dimes—per year?
Left: You don’t care about the environment.
Right: And you don’t seem to care about your money. You have tens of thousands of people dying from fentanyl because of super-carbonizer China, but you are concerned about spending money to make Indonesia a green-energy country. You are not concerned that mining hundreds of tons of earth to get enough materials for a single electric car battery is more a threat to the environment than fossil fuels. Do you know an EV has to be driven about 60,000 miles before it begins to make a dent in its carbon footprint if one considers the mining, the transporting, and the manufacturing of the materials? You know that the solar panels and windmills are made in China which continues to open coal-fired power plants while the Biden Administration intends to shut down American coal-fired plants?
Left: You’re just a science denier.
Right: And you are wasting money while polluting the planet with mine tailings from heavy metal and rare earth mining and at the same time not doing anything to stop the Chinese from building more coal-fired plants.
Left: It’s a moral issue. I’m saving the planet for future generations.
Right: As I said, I wish you a long life. In ten years you will have given $200,000 to Indonesia and other countries; in 30 years your contributions will equal $600,000. Let’s hope that the world stays stable enough over that period to avoid nuclear winter; let’s hope no madman like Putin or Kim will unleash nuclear horror. As for me, I’d rather throw a little more carbon in the atmosphere and give my $20,000 to causes centered on practical safety, on the reduction in fentanyl deaths, for example, or on the military might that deters a nuclear attack.
Left: You’re hopeless. You just don’t understand.
*https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/secret-service-recovers-286-million-stolen-covid-relief-funds-rcna44886 Accessed November 15, 2022.
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