Either you’re being paid to not notice the climate crisis we are in RIGHT FKN NOW, or you’re far enough from the trouble to pay attention to those “others.”

Construal Level Theory

That’s what most of us in the civilized world are doing. When we think about Ukraine we send our dollars, watch our evening news, and hope for the best. It’s just not that painful for us. I mean, “What can I do about the war in Ukraine?

Let’s check this out. Hawaii fires are gloriously horrible. News cycles for weeks. The devastation. The fires. The loss of life.

The loss of “other people’s lives.”

To me, in my AC-controlled bubble down here in the state of En Fuego, or Texas, as some of you still call it, I understand the pain of losing everything. Not in a fire, in a divorce that got railroaded from 50/50 shared parenting into something that marginalized me both to my kids and the state of Texas. To my ex-wife, I was already marginalized. I was the problem. I was what was making her unhappy.

See, she could’ve used some of that tasty CLT.

“the more distant an object is from the individual, the more abstract it will be thought of, while the closer the object is, the more concretely it will be thought of.” – contrual level theory

So, my divorce, is very close, very present. After 13 years, still so painful. Not in the present “I’m on fire” sense, more of a regret about losing so much influence and hugs on my two kids. One of them seems to have made it through the debris of my ex-wife’s *bs* and her OCD partner, the new “dad.” The disruptive events are still happening, I’m still close. My ex-wife and her husband are not good parents. Let the record show, it was ‘not in the best interest of the children’ to marginalize the real emotional heart of the family by giving 70% of the time to the narc mom. Not fair. Not good. On fire.

Back To the Earth

If Musk and Bezos think their Mar-shots are going to save them from our earthly demise, they are greatly deluded. Ego? Money? Power?

They are not the smart ones. They hired or bought off the smart ones. They don’t want you to look at their own destructive power. But, watching Musk dismantle and cancel Twitter, has been a case study view of what matters to the really-rich class. Power and money. And if Musk can help Trump or his successor into the white house, maybe he will get another HUGE tax break. A tax break, may I bust through your CLT to remind you, it’s over 50% of our national deficit? Wait, you say, aren’t those the liberal media’s biased numbers? Google it. And wake up.

Let’s agree that things are not going that well on Earth. We’re doing a terrible job of curbing our fossil fuel addiction, the one that’s putting most of the toxic sludge into the atmosphere. Somehow, we are looking the other way. Sure, renewables and wind and solar, yadda yadda, let’s give the poor tax breaks on those things. And on the flip side let’s limit solar and wind access to renewable budgets and incentives. Let’s promise the people better solar and then hinder the companies trying to make it more affordable and reliable.

In Texas, for example, last winter was not a snowpocalypse like the year before when the grid failed. The reason: wind turbines all across Texas kept us below the redline of failure. But, the Texas legislature, this summer, voted to restrict solar energy’s access to federal development funds. What? One politician from Corpus Christi had the balls to stand up and say, “This is going to damage my constituents.” He, single-handedly, defeated the measure. Texas, for now, will continue to grow our solar and wind capacity as a state. They will try again next session.

But, who are “they?”

Why would Texas legislators vote against solar and wind expansion? Are they protecting the birds that die on the blades of the turbines? Or are they protecting their big oil constituents? Oh, wait, I mean lobbyists? Money in government is corrupting our planet and setting Hawaii is on fire every single day. Every day we don’t vote for the planet is the day we imagine the distance between ourselves and those poor people who found a way to actually LIVE IN HAWAII. Not tourists, residents. See, we’re really hurting about the tourism business and how we won’t be able to vacation in the burned area, except for an “oh fuck” tourist trip to see the ruins.

They:

Republicans and Democrats voting against any GREEN measure

Trump and his tribe (dumb people all around, maybe not smart ones)

Oil (Oil is investing in renewables as a hedge bet, they’re hoping to pump and burn maximum oil for the next 20 years.)

Automotive Industry (don’t want trains, or EV cars, yet. Fighting renewables to save their fossil addiction.

Red State Masses (voting for something, but not self-interest or the environment)

Apathetic Smart People (you know the truth and still you rationalize a vote for Trump and the GOP saying, I’m fiscally conservative and who cares about that other stuff? Solar? Doesn’t work. Wind? Kills birds. Rail? Too expensive. (Amtrak doesn’t go where I want to go. I’ll just fly.)

People Who Don’t Vote – pure idiocy – if you voted we’d get out of this mess a lot quicker.

Big Pharma – if I were a better writer or had more time, I’d find the connection to pharma ads on television.

Pay Fking Attention

It’s not going to get better unless we stand up and fight. All of us. If you love your kids and want to imagine them on a planet that can sustain life, get off your ass and get involved.

The fires, the wars, the heavy weather, the disruptions in our comfy middle-class lives… So rare. We can see the evidence on TV. We find it a bit abstract. Kind of like, The *Real Housewives* of Anywhere being *r*e*a*l*.

Wake up fuckers, the Earth
is wounded and bleeding.

It’s not abstract or far from you, I promise. Today’s NYTIMES on the Hawaii disaster.

#voteblueordie

John McElhenney — let’s connect online
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