The Real Global Warming Conspiracy

Dear Mr. President,

After reading Dave Lindorff’s article, “Thinking the Unthinkable: What if America’s Leaders Actually Want Catastrophic Climate Change?” (http://www.nationofchange.org/thinking-unthinkable-what-if-america-s-leaders-actually-want-catastrophic-climate-change-1354173289#comments) everything fell into place. I am not a conspiracy theory adherent and maybe this isn’t a conspiracy, more a Gentleman’s Agreement, but why else would the U.S. stonewall and undermine global warming talks for the past 20 years? Why do we refuse to sign the Kyoto Agreement? Why are we not taking a leadership role at this year’s COP18 meeting in Qatar? (Qatar, with the highest CO2 emissions per capita in the world! How ironic is that?). Why is there no massive investment in green energy? I’ve realized for some time that, while global warming affects everyone, the wealthy elites will be the least affected, insulated from catastrophe by their wealth, able to pay much higher prices for food, water and essentials, maintain fortresslike redoubts to repel marauding bands of the less well-off and withstand hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters, but Lindorff, while reading the 84-page World Bank Report, “Turn Down the Heat,” makes the next logical step and notes that the good old U.S. of A. will probably be much better off than most areas on the planet and so, why not let it happen? He points out that the devastation eliminates our biggest economic competitors—China and India—and we’ve got a strong enough military to guard our southern border and repel the hordes trying to come up from Central and South America, and the Canadian border isn’t a problem, so for the next hundred years or so until the water runs out we’re okay and who cares what happens after that? nobody thinks that far ahead. Meanwhile Republicans and their propagandists—Fox News and the Wall Street Journal—are still riding their hobby horse that global warming is an illusion and the WSJ, after the announcement that the U.S. would surpass Saudi Arabia and Russia in oil and gas production, said in an editorial that all the money spent on green energy is a waste and we’ll look back someday and wonder why we did it. Meanwhile, on today’s front page of the New York Times, this headline on the aftermath of Sandy: “Post-Storm Cost May Force Many From Coast Life: Woes For Nonwealthy,” predicting a major shift in population along the New York and Jersey shorelines. Lindorff’s speculation is not so far fetched.