Something about words and actions

There's a saying about that somewhere I know I've heard before.  Maybe it applies here. 

California’s governor Gavin Newsom, for example, has announced he has “no time for climate change deniers” despite approving some forty-eight new fracking permits since April (fracking having been strongly linked to an increase in global emissions). Nancy Pelosi, having derisively dismissed the Green New Deal (“The green dream or whatever they call it”), blames climate change for both her home state’s raging wildfires and last month’s hurricane on the Gulf Coast.

Barack Obama, in characteristically elliptical fashion, took to Twitter to declare: “The fires across the West Coast are just the latest examples of the very real ways our changing climate is changing our communities. Protecting our planet is on the ballot. Vote like your life depends on it—because it does.” During Obama’s two terms at the head of the most powerful office in the world, US gas production increased some 35 percent while production of crude oil grew by an astonishing 80 percent — a fact the former president has actually taken to boasting about.

These examples, and many others like them, underscore the need for a new understanding of climate change denial that goes beyond mere acknowledgment of scientific reality. The fact is, while more US politicians than ever now pay lip service to the basic conclusions of environmental science, the leaders of both parties continue to preside over a consensus of complacency determined to dismiss transformative prescriptions like the Green New Deal as utopian or too expensive.

It's been a busy month thanks to... *gestures at all of everything*... so I haven't had time to finish writing about the Democratic and Republican conventions. But one theme the Democrats pushed relentlessly was Joe Biden's capacity for "empathy."  In Zoom video after dimly lit Zoom video, speakers testified about the times Joe personally had reached out to someone to let them know how well he understood their trauma, how much he cared about and validated their pain.  Almost nothing was said about what he planned to do about any of it.  In fact, one may have come away from the convention with the impression that nothing can be done.  It's a strange thing to offer to voters but it does seem to be in line with the Democratic brand.