Category Archives: Climate

Dark Trump Takeover Scenario

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Some say the stock market will crash if Trump steals the midterms. There are many ways he could do this. Prevent enough people from voting. Have ICE seize ballots. Have Republicans just order the counting stopped or refuse to certify election results. Surround the Capitol with tanks and put the lot of them in jail. Everyone is running through possible scenarios in their heads. (Admit it, you are.)

Bailout Bubbles

I keep hearing that this stock bubble persists because traders believe Trump will bail them out if the bubble pops. Go crazy because there’s less downside risk. There certainly is reason to believe this. Just look at what happened after the 2008 crash. Look at Silicon Valley Bank. Look at etc., etc., etc. Downside risk? What’s that? We don’t GOT no stinkin’ downside risk!

Oil Companies Know

Factor that kind of thinking into the “Trump Takeover” scenario. There could be a total corruption bailout! The corporations could finally be totally “unleashed.” ALL the money at the top and NONE of that stupid trickling down!

Oil companies know. Remember how Trump promised the oil companies they can have everything they want if they help him win. Trump won and the oil companies got Venezuela and a government that is fighting green energy & CO2 reduction rules every step of the way. Imagine what the corporations can achieve with no Congress or government departments at all to worry about.

A Dark Vision

So the other argument is at lease some think there’s the possibility that the market could go insane upwards if Trump “goes the full gestapo route.” It means the big guys at the top will get all the rest of (what’s let of) the loot. Maybe markets will believe that with all constraints removed there will be be real cheap labor and no more problems with oversight of anything — for those who can pay Trump enough. Because that’s how it works when the strongman runs things.

Smiling Politicians With Kennedy Haircuts Issue Focus-Group Words

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Fossil-fueled psychopathic planetary pollution. Sew dependence reap profit and power. Smiling politicians with Kennedy haircuts and earnest, rolled-up sleeves issue focus-group words and wet their beaks.

Temperatures ever more extreme. The land becomes brown not green. Smoke from fires clogs our lungs. Species go extinct. Crops won’t grow.

It’s OK both sides do it radical terrorists say it’s wrong. Divisions are stoked and they are conquered.

It will trickle down.

Trump Isn’t The Collapse, Trump Is A Consequence Of The Collapse

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People say America and its democracy are being collapsed by Trump. I have come to believe that what we have been calling “late-stage capitalism” was a system that had already collapsed.

Trump isn’t the collapse, Trump is the consequence of the collapse.

The Rule of Law had departed some time ago. The Constitutional system was nonfunctional. The economic system was rigged. The political system benefited only the wealthy and their corporations. That was collapse.

Accountability had long ago disappeared. (A pardon for Nixon? What?) Executives at corporations are never prosecuted. Instead the company itself would be fined – as if companies are sentient entities that can make decisions and do things. White-collar criminals were rarely prosecuted. This is how Trump was able to even be on the scene in the first place to run for office, instead of imprisoned for sex crimes, money laundering, fraud, etc.

The collapse was how Reagan was able to get away with the deal with Iran, and the later Iran/Contra deal.

The collapse was how the Supreme Court was able to make Bush president.

The collapse was how the Iraq War happened.

The collapse was how the climate crisis came about in the first place, how the companies were allowed to continue to put carbon into the air after scientists warned us of the harm it was causing, and how the executives at the companies that caused it got rich instead of being prosecuted.

The collapse was how tax cuts for the rich & corporations, with budget cuts for things government does to make people’s lives better happened.

The collapse was how no bankers were prosecuted for fraud after the financial collapse, and Wall Street but not the public was bailed out.

Rule of Law and accountability had long since disappeared from the United States. That was the collapse.

This wasn’t “late stage capitalism,” it was collapse.

People called these things “late stage capitalism.” This wasn’t late stage capitalism at all. We were already living with the collapse of the Constitutional system, the collapse of Rule of Law, the collapse of accountability. It was corruption taking over. It had been happening for decades.

Trump is just a consequence of that collapse.

In 2017’s Democracy and Corruption I wrote about “democracy off the rails” and democracy “corroded,” not realizing Trump was only possible was because the collapse had already happened.

Trump didn’t just come out of nowhere. The road to Trump goes back a long way. Trump comes out of a steady and intentional undermining of rule of law, norms, equality, civility and democracy.

They say these things happen slowly, then all at once. The collapse was happening for decades, then all at once with Trump.

We’re Underestimating the AI Threat to Democracy and Humanity

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The climate crisis is like an asteroid that is heading towards the Earth. AI could be another asteroid coming at us, but much sooner.

I used to think AI was amazing. Then I tried using the stuff they’re putting out there for various things and it was terrible, wrong and annoying. So I started to scoff at it.

I’ve changed my mind again. We shouldn’t disregard it or scoff at it. It is already replacing coders, and it is good at lots and lots of other things. It will get better and it will get better really quickly.

Here’s a prediction: Without regulation AI will be used to manipulate the 2026 elections in ways we don’t see or understand. In other countries the same will happen. The oligarchs are guaranteed to try this, and might well succeed.

The goal of the AI effort is “superintelligence.” This is Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) that can learn and make itself better. Once it gets to that point it will immediately accelerate its own learning and will very, very quickly surpass anything people can do.

The people running the AI companies are hoping to “get there first” and use it to take over the world, for themselves, personally. For their own benefit, and never mind anyone else. I think that’s obvious.

Imagine a tool that lets dictators anticipate and disrupt anything – anything – that might try to stop them, and that can manipulate the public with a power beyond our comprehension. A tool that is infinitely smarter than us or anything humanity has ever encountered. People have been able to overcome people in these situations, but this will be different – if we let it happen. It is the INTENT of Musk and the others for this to happen.

So here is a warning from someone on the inside who understands what’s going on. I listened to the podcast while walking. Look for “GZERO World with Ian Bremmer”

“OpenAI whistleblower Daniel Kokotajlo on superintelligence and existential risk of AI”

Here it is on YouTube. (The settings “gear” icon lets you increase the playback speed.)

Why People Vote Against Their Interests

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Short statement on why people vote for Trumps and Farages and the like:

Tobacco companies figured out how to convince people to kill themselves slowly and painfully, and to pay them for the privilege.

When the govt started warning of the harm they caused they took their techniques into politics.

Later, oil and coal companies took up the cause.

Humans And Atrocities

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People are people everywhere.

The US has its dark past. Slavery. Genocide of Native Americans. CIA coups overthrowing democracies. Invasions. Etc.

But there’s nothing special about the US and its various apartheids, genocides and atrocities. Right now it’s Israel, moving from apartheid to genocide. We all know the history of European colonialism, Germany’s genocide, the Balkans… There’s China and Tibet ad the Uyghurs. Look at Rwanda … it’s everywhere.

Human civilization is barely able to contain the underlying hatreds and violence. Certain types of people take advantage of this by inciting, stoking the hatreds to get what they want because they don’t care about the consequences to others. The current formula in the Western world is to use immigrants as the “other” to demonize. “Invasion” is the word the right is using to “other” immigrants now in the US, UK and EU. Hatred was mostly directed against Muslims for a while but now it is pretty much any immigrants. (If you think desperate, terrified people fleeing violence, extreme inequality and the climate crisis are the enemy you’d better realize that’s quite possibly you in a few years.)

Civilization doesn’t continue without leadership willing to fight that. And you can’t get and keep that kind of leadership if your system is open to corruption. This is because if corruption is enabled then the bad actors drive out the good ones who can’t compete because they won’t be corrupt. (That’s why progressives don’t win here.)

I’m not optimistic about the future.

Ignore ALL The Words

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Ignore all the words. That’s just stuff said to hide what’s happening.

Just look at what is being done. That is the only truth now.

More than 2 million Palestinians are being bombed without mercy. They are being starved and treated as less than human. Their homes, hospitals, schools, etc are being destroyed to keep them from being able to return. It’s happening right there in front of us.

The billionaires around the world are growing ever more wealthy, and are using that wealth to create an unbreakable system to keep things that way. Societal systems (democracy, information, rule of law etc) that enabled people to take care of each other are being destroyed. The rest of us are left to fend for ourselves.

The climate crisis is right in front of our noses, but the polluters control the levels of societal power. They will do what they can to keep themselves on top. They don’t care what happens to the rest of us or to the future.

Ignore all the words. All of them. We live in a propaganda bath designed to keep us from acting on what we see happening to us.

COP28

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COP28 stands for the 28th year of the “Conference of Parties” to climate change. THIS COP called for a transition away from use of fossil fuels in its final report.

It took 28 YEARS before a climate conference said that burning fossil fuels and allowing the resulting carbon pollution to be dumped into the air was a problem!

What does that tell you?

(Hint: It tells you that fossil fuel companies have been able to use their vast resources to influence and control governments around the world.)

Shouting FIRE On A Warming Planet

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FIRE: Finance Insurance Real Estate

I (Insurance) looks at longer-term risks. That’s why the industry is pulling out of Florida, etc. The know what is coming.

F(inance) and RE(real estate) look short-term and are still ignoring the climate crisis. There are short-term profits to be made.

Financial collapse happens slowly, then all at once. Another huge hurricane? A heat wave that kills thousands? Terrible flooding? SOMETHING will happen one of these days, and suddenly everyone will be worried that they shouldn’t be where they are.

Florida real estate is an example. It is already worthless because it will be underwater relatively soon. And one day SOMETHING will happen and everyone will decide it’s time to get out. Sell! But they’ll all decide to sell at once and the buyers will have seen the same thing. So all the mortgages will fail. All the lenders will fail.

And THAT will trigger a closer look at other climate-devalued real estate, like Phoenix and every other coastal area.

Boom.

F and RE will catch up with I.

Corruption And Consequences

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Silicon Valley Bank fails…

Corruption allowed the finance industry to operate outside of sensible government oversight, even as the world has experienced the consequences of this over and over again. So here in Silicon Valley and around the world, tech employees are waiting to find out if they’ll get their paychecks or get laid off next week. The world is wondering if contagion will spread that fear. Again. (Last time, because of corruption, not one banker type was held accountable. Not one.)

Also here in Silicon Valley it is raining harder than almost ever – except for a couple weeks ago. Flooding everywhere. I mean, torrential, incredible rain pouring down right now. This is because corruption has caused governments to allow the industry causing this to keep putting more and more carbon into the air even as we all know what the consequences will be.

The news lately has been about train derailments devastating localities. This happens because corruption allows wealthy rail-owners to keep governments from making them operate safely.

Inequality is now completely out-of-control. 60% of Americans now live paycheck-to-paycheck, not even able to raise $500 to cover an emergency like a car breakdown. The government doesn’t raise the minimum wage or otherwise address this because of obvious corruption. Million upon millions are spent convincing these people to blame government for this and vote for those backed by that money, and abolish democracy. “I am your retribution.”

The Supreme Court “rules” that this is all OK. Any amount of secret money is allowed to influence elections. People trying to fix this face millions of dollars spent smearing them in LOCAL elections. This Supreme Court we have is the way it is because of corrupt money spent to put them there.

Is there a common theme here?