Its Deja Vu All Over Again.

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Déjà Vu All Over again

"Such Consequences That You Have Never Encountered in Your History"

He'due south our very own emperor from hell, an updated version of Nero who, in legend, burned down Rome on a whim, though ours prefers drowning Washington.  Why, just the other 24-hour interval, Donald Trump — and you knew perfectly well who I meant — bent the ears of 250 summit Republican donors for 84 minutes. Among other things, he bodacious those all-American (not Russian) oligarchs — and let me quote him in the Washington Post on this — that "'the global warming hoax, it but never ends…' He mocked the concept of sea levels rising, disputing widely held science. 'To which I say, keen, nosotros have more waterfront property.'"

Absolutely, he'south talking about flooded property, including perhaps whole cities going underwater in the decades to come up, but what the hell! Aye, indeed, he was the president of the United states of america not so long agone and, if all goes well (for him, not us), he or some doppelganger, could win the Oval Function once more in 2024, ensuring the arrival of that new, all-likewise-wet waterfront property.  And yes, he offered up that petty gem — about the 9,000th time he's called climate change a "hoax" (sometimes blaming it on China) — just as a new scientific report came out suggesting that, if things don't improve in fossil-fuel-burning terms, up to half of the Amazon pelting forest, ane of the great carbon sinks on Earth, could be transformed into savanna. To quote the Washington Post over again:

"The warming consequences of suddenly losing half the rainforest would be felt thousands of miles away and for centuries into the future, scientists warn. It would mean escalating storms and worsening wildfires, chronic food shortages and nearly a foot of bounding main level ascent inundating coastal communities. Information technology could trigger other tipping points, such as the melting of ice sheets or the disruption of the South American monsoon."

Hey, Donald, what could maybe go incorrect on this all-too-embattled planet of ours?

Of form, at this moment, three of the four largest greenhouse gas emitters, Russia, the U.Due south. (which is now allowing more drilling for oil and gas than even during Trump's presidency), and China, are locked in what could only be thought of every bit a mortiferous embrace over Vladimir Putin's disastrous invasion of Ukraine. And the grim state of war the Russian president launched seems likely to guarantee yet more fossil-fuel use on a planet that needs so much less of it, fifty-fifty as he also put the issue of nuclear war back on the table for the kickoff fourth dimension since the Cold War ended.  How advisable, if you're heading into Common cold State of war II to once again raise the possibility — forget well-nigh the side by side Chernobyl — of turning Earth War III into a nuclear one.

At this point, if y'all don't mind a genuine understatement, what a foreign planet nosotros at present live on.

World'south End, Property of…?

Once upon a time, whatsoever your religion, Armageddon was the belongings of the gods; until Baronial vi, 1945, that is, when a lone B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay (named afterwards its pilot's mother), dropped the first atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, essentially obliterating it.

Thought of some other style, notwithstanding, nosotros humans took the ability to end the world (at least equally we've known it) out of the hands of the gods in the nineteenth century when the fossil-fuel based industrialization of Planet World began in earnest in Slap-up Britain. In other words, credit our cleverness. In the space of a mere 200 or so years, we've developed 2 unlike ways of devastating or even ending our life on this planet. Consider that a genuine achievement for humanity.

As information technology happens, contempo nuclear and climate-modify news should accept brought that reality to mind again.  Merely before I even become to Vladimir Putin, the invasion of Ukraine, and the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), permit me mention that, more or less whatever week, in that location'south a new study (or two or three) of our climate future suggesting ever more extreme peril for us in the decades (or even months) to come: always fiercer droughts, intensifying heat, more farthermost wildfires, more melting ice, and e'er rising sea levels.

Of course, like the rest of us, yous already know that story, right? And of i thing you lot can be sure, the next scientific report, whatever information technology is, volition only offering yet more farthermost climate news (with the rarest of exceptions).  In fact, I had barely begun writing notes for this slice when that IPCC study arrived on the scene with, of class, the latest round of dreadful news nigh where we're heading — to a potentially "irreversible" hell in a handbasket, natch. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called it a "lawmaking crimson for humanity," lamenting that the testify it details was unlike anything he had ever seen on the field of study and describing it every bit an "atlas of man suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership."

Damning indeed on a planet where, even earlier the Ukrainian nightmare, information technology was obvious that fundamental leaders were doing anything but greening this world fast enough for the wellness of humanity.  And that, of class, is simply the background against which all of united states of america now operate, whether we think about information technology or not — and in the midst of events in Ukraine, information technology'due south not being given much idea at all — on a planet going to… well, why insult "the dogs"?

Which brings me back to Vladimir Putin.  The strange affair about that other form of planetary suicide, atomic weaponry, is that, since at to the lowest degree the terminate of the Cold War, it'due south generally not been on the table (and so to speak) or much in the news.  Yes, in the Trump years, the president did implicitly threaten to rain nuclear hell on North Korea — he called it "fire and fury" — and, at ane indicate, spoke of ending the Afghan War with just such a strike, but nigh of the fourth dimension from 1990 to late terminal night, nuclear weapons (Iran, which didn't accept them, aside) simply weren't role of the conversation.

Now, don't go me wrong.  In those same decades, nuclear arsenals only spread and grew.  Nine countries now possess such weaponry and the three swell powers on the planet — the U.Southward., China, and Russia — have all been difficult at work. Russian federation has been "modernizing" its vast arsenal and Communist china moving rapidly to build upwards its ain.

Since Barack Obama'due south presidency, the U.Southward. military-industrial complex has also been — and, yes, this is indeed the term often used — "modernizing" its already mind-extraordinary armory to the tune of $1.seven trillion to $2 trillion dollars over three decades.  That includes, for instance, a new intercontinental ballistic missile known as the Footing-Based Strategic Deterrent that, it's already estimated, will accept at least 264 billion of our tax dollars over its lifetime (and that'due south before the toll overruns even begin!).  Keep in mind that this land already had an unmodernized arsenal all too capable of destroying this planet many times over into the distant future. With our 1,357 deployed nuclear weapons (3,750, if y'all count the "inactive" ones), including land-based nuclear missiles, those transported by strategic bombers, and our nuclear subs wandering the world'south waters with their own devastating nukes on board, global destruction would exist a given.

With all that activity long underway to remarkably niggling attending, nuclear weapons — and apocalyptic possibilities — have over again hit the headlines thank you to Vladimir Putin. Afterward all, as his troops headed into Ukraine, he suddenly and all too publicly issued a directive putting his nuclear forces on "high alert" and offered this gem to the world:

"Whoever tries to hinder us, and even more than then, to create threats to our state, to our people, should know that Russia's response volition be immediate. And it will lead you to such consequences that y'all take never encountered in your history."

To make his point fifty-fifty clearer, he promptly oversaw the examination launching of 4 nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. Since the U.S. however has plenty of tactical nuclear weapons based in Europe, consider united states one time again, as in the original Cold War, on edge and in a nuclear stand-off. Meanwhile, in Ukraine, the Russians threaten to echo, of all things, the Chernobyl disaster by taking the nuclear plants they once set and serviced in that location in a wartime blaze of horror.  One has already been captured nether hair-raising circumstances.

Looking back, perhaps the strangest thing of all is that nearly Americans, perchance near people on the planet, substantially forgot well-nigh nukes.  In retrospect, you accept to wonder how that was ever possible, especially if you lot're my age and retrieve ducking and covering at school in repeated nuclear test drills, while the media of that time focused on whether people should share their personal nuclear shelters with their friends and neighbors. And mind you lot, that was in the years when, in reality, Russian nuclear weapons couldn't yet reach this land (though the U.Due south. already had the ability to devastate the communist world).

Here, then, is a foreign irony: in the years when we were almost truly paying attending, they couldn't have washed anything to us. Once they truly could, we essentially began forgetting those weapons. Now, however, the potential destruction of humanity is back on the table — and this time effectually, brilliantly enough, in two different means.

Dark-green What?

Believe me, when you've been on this planet for 77 years, you feel like you lot've seen everything.  And then, of course, it turns out that you haven't. Not by a long shot. Not faintly. At 14, my granddaddy, a Jew, ran abroad from his dwelling house in the urban center of Lemberg when information technology was still part of the Austro-Hungarian empire.  Betwixt Earth Wars I and II, it was chosen Lvov and belonged to Poland.  During that second great state of war, the Jewish population there was slaughtered by the Nazis.  Since the end of that nightmarish state of war, it's been known equally Lviv and it's been part of Ukraine, or rather, if Vladimir Putin has his way, the place that until recently was known as Ukraine. Equally a event, Lviv is again in the news, big time.

I mean, invading Ukraine at this moment?  How truly mad.  Information technology'southward all the same hard to take in what'due south happening, including the million-plus children who accept already fled that country. Of grade, ever more than people are in motion on this planet today thanks both to war and climate change. Yet, in a sense, there's really nowhere left to go, is at that place?

As it turns out, our leaders have washed all too good a job of providing options for catastrophe the earth.  I mean, in a century when information technology should be hard not to know that, if the burning of fossil fuels isn't brought under control, life equally we've known information technology will end to exist, two great powers with preening, overweening leaders idea it fabricated far more sense to order their militaries to invade other countries based on lies.  Because of that, cities were destroyed and deaths made all as well plentiful.  Vladimir Putin's ongoing invasion and destruction of Ukraine has been denounced by much of the world led by Joe Biden's America.  Russia is now experiencing potentially devastating sanctions, while from sports to entertainment to fast food, much of the planet has been turning its back on Russia.

Simply here'southward the odd thing: Russia invaded its neighbor, which one time indeed had been part of the Soviet Wedlock. The other great and invasive power I had in mind struck 2 countries thousands of miles abroad — Republic of iraq (based on the lie that its autocratic ruler was developing nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction) and Afghanistan.  And yes, as the present conflict will undoubtedly prove a catastrophe for Russia and the people of Ukraine, and so those wars proved disasters for the The states but even more so for Afghans and Iraqis.  Strangely enough, all the same, the earth didn't condemn the U.S. for its acts. No sanctions were put in place.  No weaponry was sent to Afghans or Iraqis to help them defend themselves against the occupying royal power.  And stranger withal, in retrospect, the nowadays president of the United states of america, then a senator, voted to invade Iraq and subsequently fifty-fifty developed a plan to divide that U.S.-occupied state into three different states.

And so it goes on this endangered planet of ours, while the greenhouse gasses from unending fossil-fuel burning invade our atmosphere with devastating effect, yet create next to no headlines at all.

Armageddon-Makers

Today, 76 years after Earth State of war Two concluded (I was i at the time), the heartland of Europe is again embroiled in state of war, death, and destruction. And more than three decades after the Cold War ended, the new tsar of Russia, at present a rickety petro-state with an economy smaller than Italia'south, is responsible.

Confused withal?  Well, you should be on this god-forsaken planet of ours.

If y'all wait at the American experience, whether in Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan (or the Russian feel in that aforementioned state), the ane thing you know is that this can't finish well, non for Vladimir Putin or Joe Biden or Donald Trump or the rest of united states, not on a planet that humanity insists on taking down.  A tip of my lid goes to the outraged Russians who have hit the streets to protestation the war in Ukraine, as Americans did (myself included), nonetheless briefly, in that spring of 2003 when the invasion of Iraq loomed.

Given our earth, we should all probably be in the streets at present. I hateful, hither we are heading into Cold War Two, while facing the possibility of Globe State of war Iii on a planet that, cheers to the way nosotros live and produce energy, is heading for hell. Think of climatic change in its own way every bit perhaps the equivalent of World War Four, though somehow, while Ukraine is endlessly in the headlines, the climate emergency, no matter how horrifying the news, remains in the shadows, fifty-fifty as the Republicans call for yet more fossil-fuel drilling.

The peacing of Earth? Not likely. The greening of World?  Non likely either, it seems.  In our own fashion, we have indeed taken the place of aboriginal gods of every sort.  We are now the Armageddon-makers and, sadly enough, it seems that we're just gearing up.

Copyright 2022 Tom Engelhardt

FollowTomDispatchon Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Acceleration Books, John Feffer'due south new dystopian novel, Songlands(the final one in his Splinterlands serial), Beverly Gologorsky'due south novel Every Body Has a Story , and Tom Engelhardt'due south A Nation Unmade past War , too as Alfred McCoy's In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power  and John Dower'south The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since Earth War Ii.

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Source: https://tomdispatch.com/deja-vu-all-over-again/

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